BABY WITH THE BEAST

by Naomi West

  I go into the kitchen and get myself a beer, and then return to the room I’ve half-made into a bedroom, my mattress resting under the shadow of piled-up boxes. The room smells of old oil and metal.

  As I drink, I remember the beach, walking down near the waves and wondering what I should do. Loads of crazy shit went through my mind. I thought about going back to the clubhouse and slamming my fists on Grimace’s desk and telling him I’d never burn another goddamn building for him again. I thought about setting my bike on fire and walking into the sea so I didn’t have to think about anything anymore. I thought about taking Willa and riding to New York, leaving the west behind forever. But when it came down to it, I felt—feel—like I owe Grimace too much.

  I think of the night Willa told me about her past, how it seemed to make us closer for a little while. But then that passed. We kiss, we touch. Once I had my hand down her panties with my fingers on her clit, rubbing, her pussy so wet I thought nothing in the world could stop her. But if the fire between us is strong, the real fires are stronger. She can never get past them. I haven’t even admitted that it’s me who’s setting them, but she isn’t stupid.

  Soon the sun is rising. I go into the bathroom, groaning as I splash water in my face. It’s never a good idea to drink in the early hours of the morning and get no sleep. I stretch out my body and go about my morning workout, dragging the free weights box from under the couch. Willa comes out as I’m doing bicep curls. I’m only wearing shorts and I see her eyes move to my chest. When she first looked at me like that, I thought she was looking at the scars. But now I know she’s looking at my body, just as I look at hers. It’s crazy … two people who want to fuck this badly and yet haven’t.

  She pads to the bathroom and turns on the shower. Unlike me, she locks the door.

  When she comes out, I’m sitting on the couch eating some cereal and watching TV. I’m starting to think she’s going to move out soon, or she’s thinking about it. Last week she would’ve said hello, smiled, come and sat with me. Now she just powerwalks from the bathroom into her bedroom without so much as glancing at me. I wonder if she’s seeing some guy at work and my blood turns cold. It has no right to, I know that, it’s not like I’ve got any claim on her, but if she’s staying here and we’re kissing almost every damn night, I can’t stop my blood from going cold.

  I’m annoyed at myself when the thought occurs to me that I should just ask her. I’ve never been that sort of guy. I’ve never gotten involved in that petulant relationship stuff. But that’s because before I didn’t care enough. I care now. So when she comes out of the bedroom wearing a work dress and heels, her hair bound up in her Viking style—and when I think of some asshole with his hands on this woman—I can’t stop myself.

  “Willa,” I say.

  “Yes.” She pauses halfway to the door.

  “What’s going on? This morning, last night … you’re different.”

  “I’m pretty sure we kissed and then I sent you to your room last night,” she says, voice high-pitched for some reason. “Isn’t that what happens every night?”

  I don’t know why I do it. Maybe it’s just her prissy tone, the way she’s talking to me like I’m an annoying pet. Or maybe it’s a whole combination of things. The cereal bowl shatters against the wall, milk and cereal going everywhere, splatters distorting the TV screen image.

  There’s absolute silence for a few seconds, and then Willa says, “Wow, just wow.”

  “Wow,” I repeat, turning to her. “Don’t ever talk to me like that again.”

  “Why, will you throw something at me next?”

  “I’d never do that.” My voice is trembling. It’s hard to stay still. I pace up and down near the couch. “Just don’t fucking talk to me like that.”

  “Don’t swear at me, Diesel.” Her voice has become cold, detached. I can see some hint of emotion in her eyes, but her exterior is ice. “If you talk to me like that, I’ll have to leave.”

  “Leave where?” I go to her, standing close enough to touch. But I don’t touch. “Where would you go? Tell me that.”

  “Get away from me.” She places a hand on my chest. “You’re an animal.”

  “Is that right?”

  I lean down. She leans up. All at once we’re doing the same dance we’ve done this past month or so. I grab her ass, lift her off her feet, and she wraps her legs around me. Damn, but she feels fine, finer than fine. Her ass is firm and round, the sort of ass a man can imagine bouncing up and down on his cock. I move my hand between her legs, sliding up her tights, pressing down on her panties. She moans in my ear. Her breath is warm, the sound sweet. We’re lying in bed when she pushes away from me, rolling aside.

  “Stop it, Diesel,” she pants. “I—I have to get to work. This is so fucked.”

  “What’s fucked?” I stand up, following her into the living room. My balls are aching like crazy, like they’ve been aching every night for weeks. I need to come inside this woman. I think I’ll die if I don’t.

  “This.” She gestures at me and then herself. “This situation. It’s … it’s messed up.”

  “Where would you go? If you left, where would you go?”

  She bites her lip, eyes flitting all over me except into my eyes. “I have to get to work.”

  I follow her to the door, closing it firmly when she tries to open it. “What is this, Willa? What the fuck’s going on here?”

  “I wish I knew, Diesel. I really wish I knew. Let me go, please.”

  I step back, letting her out of the door because there’s not much of an alternative. When she’s gone, I sit on the couch, elbows on my knees, looking at the fragments of the broken bowl and wondering what the hell’s gotten into me. Everything’s messed up. My head is a mess. That’s the goddamn truth. I used to be strong-headed, steel-headed. Nothing could get in to mess around with me. But now Willa’s broken through and brought all the bullshit of life through with her.

  I’m almost glad when Grimace calls me and asks me to come by the club. At least it’s a distraction.

  The clubhouse is on the outskirts of the city, a squat building nestled between low hills. Above the door, a skull rides, and in the club itself there are pictures everywhere of old club members, dead club members, and some current ones, too. A few men are drinking and playing cards in the corner. As I make my way to Grimace’s office, Johnny Smith jumps in my way. He’s a short man, skinny as a handlebar, with a mustache to match. He looks ridiculous in Skull Rider leathers but he’s a good worker as far as I know. His hair comes down past his shoulders in lank sheets.

  “Big man,” he says, smiling, showing too much gum. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine,” I mutter.

  “I bet!” Johnny laughs, and then leans in too close. He reeks of whisky. I’m guessing him and his pals have done an all-nighter. “Listen, if you ever need any help, you let me know, all right, big man? I’d be happy to come along.” He winks. “Bet it’s pretty exciting, eh, big man?”

  “If you call me big man one more time, I’m going to force-feed you your teeth.”

  I push past him into Grimace’s office. I’m too tired for this. The headache fades, leaving behind a band of tension in my forehead, constant but dull. Grimace is clipping his mustache with a set of scissors which look childlike in his massive hands. I wonder if that’s how I look to other people. I know I’m bigger than him. But looking at him sometimes it’s hard to believe. Maybe it’s because he was bigger than me once.

  “I have another job for you,” he says, holding up the pocket mirror.

  I stop myself from sighing. “Okay,” I say.

  “It’s a laundromat. Should be easy enough. Closed at night. Semi-detached, with a takeout place next door. You might need to consider that.”

  “Okay.”

  I’m at the door when I turn around and return to the desk. “And what if I didn’t do it?” I ask. “What then?”

  “What do you mean?” Grimace lays his scissors and mirror o
n the desk. “Why wouldn’t you do it?”

  “Humor me, Grimace. What if I didn’t?”

  Grimace rests his chin on his knuckles, crushing his beard. “Then I’d send one of the other guys to do it. But I’ve gotta say, kid, I don’t like this attitude. The fuck has this come from? Don’t forget who you’re talking to. I’m the goddamn president, remember? And don’t forget all I’ve done for you, either.”

  I growl, clench my fists, and then unclench my fists and back out of the office. “How could I?”

  The day is only getting started and I’m already dog-tired, so I go back to the apartment and slump down on my bed. Not the oil-smelling mattress, but my bed, which smells of Willa. I press my face into the pillow and breathe in the smell of her, perfume and hair and woman, a smell that chases me into my dreams.

  My real work won’t start until this evening. That’s when I’ll take another piece of my soul and burn it to ash. That’s when the idea of me being a dad will seem all the more laughable.

  Chapter Ten

  Willa

  I get home at seven o’clock, not sure how to feel about the day at the station. On the one hand, Brittany hasn’t been as annoying, and Peter hasn’t been as, well … Peter. But on the other hand, I’m still getting nowhere. Two of my proposals for stories were rejected, and maybe that was because they deserved to be rejected. Maybe that’s because I’m not sure if my heart is in this anymore.

  I have my own key to the apartment so I let myself in, going into the kitchen and microwaving some leftover pasta, and then pouring myself a glass of wine. As I go to the couch, I look around the apartment, thinking this is the strangest living arrangement I’ve ever experienced. My grandmother, with her four cats and her obsession with bottle caps, was pretty strange, but this beats it. I’m living with a man in separate rooms but we kiss and touch every night but never have sex. I’m sexually frustrated and it’s all my fault.

  But it’s more than that, I reflect, as I pour myself my third glass of wine. I’m tipsy, but I don’t care. It’s half past eight o’clock and the TV is playing and I’m hardly watching it at all. Diesel is out somewhere, doing something. It’s more than that, I reflect as I take a long sip from my third glass of wine. I’m sure there’s more to it than sex. I’m sure there’s more to it than wanting him inside of me. I think about that first conversation we had about a baby. Lately, when I close my eyes, I see myself holding a child with Diesel looking down at us. It makes no sense. And yet it won’t go away.

  I clean up the broken bowl, scooping up the big pieces and vacuuming the small awkward ones. I shouldn’t be with a man who breaks bowls, I tell myself. I start on my fourth glass of wine, opening a second bottle. I wish Diesel was something else, but then if he was something else, wouldn’t he be somebody else, too? I think about how I told him about my past, how easy it seemed, how well he listened. Do people get to choose who they fall for, or is that decision made for them?

  The TV image is slightly distorted from where milk has dried on it. For some reason, that seems hilarious. I take another sip, and then spit it out laughing.

  “What’s funny?” I turn at the sound of his voice. He’s standing in the doorway, a bottle in his hand, his words slurred. As he walks into the apartment, he trails the smell of smoke with him.

  “Nothing,” I say. “You’re drunk.”

  “Am’nt,” he slurs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, little lady, lady little. The world needs to get off my goddamn case.”

  “Don’t throw yourself a pity party,” I tell him. “If there’s one thing I hate, it’s that.”

  “I better not do that, then.” He drops heavily into the chair and then takes a swig from the whisky bottle. It’s almost empty, a few trickles dropping onto his tongue. “What’re you drinking?” he asks.

  “Wine,” I say.

  “I’ll have a glass. Womanly shit, but better’n nothing.”

  I think about telling him no, but if I’m drinking I might as well have company. Plus, he looks terrible. His face—and the smell of smoke—tells me that he’s just done something as terrible as his face. I should be running to the nearest police station. Instead, I get him a glass of wine and refill my own, placing them both on the coffee table. He drains half of his in one gulp.

  “This is disgusting,” he says.

  He takes a matchstick from his pocket and chews the wooden end, and then tosses it to the floor. “One day I accidentally broke the switch that turned the shower on and off. It wasn’t the shower unit or anything. Just the switch that let the water pass through. Maybe they’re not common?” I shake my head, but he doesn’t look at me. He stares into space. “I pulled on it too hard. I was twelve but I was big, way bigger than the other boys. Maybe that’s why he hated me so much, or maybe it’s because I killed my mom when I was born. Whatever it was, I broke this switch and my dad—my fine, upstanding policeman dad—came home and found out.

  “I knew there’d be hell to pay because there was always hell to pay, so I’d blocked myself in my room.” He chuckles darkly. “He busted right through that door, his policeman’s boot smashing right through, and there I was, nearly as tall as him, pissing my goddamn pants. Sometimes it was the belt. But if it was more serious, he’d get out this long, thin blade.”

  “Oh God, Diesel …” Tears prick my eyes. I move up the couch so that I can reach across and place my hand atop his.

  “I got used to it after a while. He’d cut into my back and tell me I was a useless piece of dirt who’d never amount to anything. He’d cut patterns into my back and tell me he was doing it for my own good. I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

  “It’s okay.”

  I wipe tears from my cheeks. I try and remind myself that this man most likely just burned down a building, that people might be hurt, but right now he just seems like a troubled drunk man who needs somebody to care for him. I don’t know if I want to be that somebody. But I am that somebody. I’m holding his hand. I’m listening. I can’t stop myself. Something inside of him is calling out to me and I can’t ignore it.

  “I started staying out nights when I got older, getting in with the wrong crowd. That’s what they say, isn’t it? The wrong crowd. But it didn’t seem like that at the time. These were people showing me some goddamn kindness, who I could laugh with and drink with and smoke with and fight with. If we hurt each other, it was fair. It wasn’t some grownup asshole cutting a kid. You can guess what my dad thought of me staying out. My proud policeman dad. My respected-in-the-fucking-community dad. The beatings came down harder. I got more scars. Look at me, Willa, and you’ll see everything the bastard did to me marked for life.”

  My heart is breaking for him. I tug on his hand, leading him to the couch, and then get on my knees so that I can wrap both of my arms around him. We’re both drunk but it doesn’t matter. This is real. I know this is real.

  “This wasn’t in LA. It was down near San Diego. When I was sixteen, I saved up enough money from all my small jobs—fighting, mostly—and I skipped town. I came to LA not giving a shit about anything other than never being dragged down into the basement again. I didn’t care. Not about myself, not about anybody else. I’d go to bars and pick fights with the bouncers just for the hell of it. That’s where Grimace found me, a pup gone wild … That’s what he called me one night, when we were drinking. I’m boring you. I’m boring myself.”

  He leaned forward and picked up the wine glass, draining it.

  “You’re not boring me. You could never bore me.”

  I kiss him on the cheek, holding his shoulders, trying to keep him from swaying. He brings my glass of wine to my lips. “You’re not drinking,” he says.

  “I am,” I reply, and let him tip the glass so its contents empty into me.

  Both of us swaying together as though slow dancing, he goes on.

  “I joined up with the Riders. I was an enforcer. Beating people up, getting money, and then I got word that the old man had di
ed in a shootout. I didn’t give a damn about him. Or maybe I did. Fuck, I don’t know. All I know is I went down there for the funeral and that was the biggest mistake of my life. I ended up getting into a fight with one of my dad’s cop friends and having the fucking book thrown at me. It was a scuffle and the man wasn’t hurt, not even close to hurt, but they gave me five years for it. Five years, Willa, but it might as well’ve been life, ’cause when you’re the son of a cop it don’t matter if you’ve joined up with a one-percent club, you’re still the son of a cop. I would’ve been torn apart in there if Grimace hadn’t set me up with some of his inside boys, fixing it so they were transferred to my prison. He saved my life.