BABY WITH THE BEAST

by Naomi West

  “So,” Molly says, shutting the door behind me, “you have something you’d like to discuss.”

  I swallow, wringing my hands. The moment is here. I have to do it. I can’t let him run around the office doing anything he likes anymore. Maybe I can handle it—and I’m not even sure than I can—but somebody else might not be able to. I have to act so that he doesn’t do his whole Nice Guy routine on somebody else. Plus, he’s drinking, taking drugs, missing important work.

  “I need to talk about Peter—”

  He barges into the room, swaying from side to side as he makes his way to the table.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Molly says, no longer the starry-eyed woman she was when she discovered I was pregnant. Now she’s as tough as metal. “But this is a private meeting.”

  “Private? Private?” Peter laughs maniacally. “How’s this for private?” He reaches down and grabs his package, squeezing it for our benefit. “How does that suit you, huh? I bet that suits you fine. I bet that suits you fine and dandy.” He drops heavily into a chair. “Sorry, sorry.” He bows his head. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “I’m going to have to please ask you to leave,” Molly says. “We can’t have you interrupting this meeting.”

  “Interrupting this meeting? What are you meeting about?” He points a shaky finger at me. “Are you meeting about how she moved in with me and led me on and skipped around the apartment with the shortest shorts on you’ve ever seen?” He burps, and then takes a miniature bottle of vodka from his pocket. I’m stunned into simply watching him. He necks the vodka. “Can I tell you a story?” Molly makes to interrupt, but he just talks louder. “When I was in college there was a girl named Fiona who said she loved me more than anything. They were her words. I remember because I made a point of remembering. She said she loved me more than anything and that she’d never hurt me. And then one night I came home and that whore had her ass in the air and my best friend was fucking her, fucking her right in our living room. We were sharing an apartment and my best friend was fucking her. How’s that, huh?”

  Molly stands up. “You need to leave, sir, or I’m going to have to call security.”

  “Call security?” He sounds genuinely confused as he looks up at her. For a moment he looks like a child. “Why would you do something like that? I’m not hurting anybody or anything. I’m just talking.”

  “This is a private meeting,” Molly says, “and you are disturbing it. And you are drinking in the office.” She spreads her hands, imploring him. “Why don’t you go home today, sir, and return in the morning when you’re feeling better.”

  The words seem to get through to him. He nods, stands up, and walks to the door, staring at the floor the whole time like a chastised teenager. But then he coughs out a laugh and turns to Molly, pointing at her face with a shaky finger. “Has anyone ever told you how ugly that mole is? And pathetic, too, because you’ve done such a shitty job at covering it up. It’s ugly, woman, almost as ugly as that cunt over there. See ya, ladies.”

  He marches from the office, singing a tune under his breath. Molly just stands there, frozen. I go to her, standing close by her shoulder, no idea what to say or do. I’m still processing what just happened. It’s like I’m several minutes behind. Molly turns to me. Her eyes are watery, but when she speaks, her voice is firm. “I want every single detail concerning your complaint,” she says. “Don’t leave anything out. Whatever he said to you during work hours, or in a work capacity, which was out of place or inappropriate, I want to hear about it.”

  “Okay,” I say, returning to my seat. “I can do that.”

  We speak for the next hour, stopping only for Molly to make a run to the breakroom and return with two coffees. When we’re done, she’s filled five sides of A4 with my notes. She takes down almost every word I say. I can tell she’s hurt by Peter’s comments and I can’t blame her, but the more I speak, the more professionally angry she looks. “It’s completely unacceptable,” she says when we’re done. “I don’t know how this has gone on for so long. It’s just—I’m speechless, really. And you thought you couldn’t come forward because …”

  “I’m just an intern,” I say. “I don’t have a contract or anything.”

  Molly bites her lip. “Hmm, maybe we need to create a new policy. Let me compile these notes into a report. I have a feeling Peter’s not going to be with us much longer, however.”

  We shake hands and I go back to my desk, staring at my copy. When the time comes for me to go and meet with Sofia Silva, my desk phone rings and her secretary informs me that the meeting is going to be delayed until the end of the day. So I spend the rest of the day typing out copy and trying not to worry about the dossier of twisted facts and half-truths Diesel and I put together. The dossier stands up, I think, because all of it is based on fact. Nothing is fabricated. But if she needs a little longer, that means she might be really going through it, triple-checking every detail. I tell myself we’re doing the right thing. Since his death, Chino has been in the news constantly. His list of crimes is gruesome, evil. The police solved five missing children’s cases just by raiding his apartment.

  I’m in the breakroom making my fourth mug of coffee when Brittany walks in, pretending not to look at me as she pours a glass of water. She’s not doing a very good job. Out of the corner of my eye I can see her looking at me out of the corner of her eye. She makes a tutting noise when she drops her glass into the sink, although part of me suspects she did it on purpose.

  I turn to her. “Is everything okay, Brittany?” I ask.

  “I guess so,” she says quietly, looking at my waist instead of into my eyes. “It’s just … I guess I want to—you know …” She raises her eyes to mine, and then flits them back down. “You know,” she insists.

  “I don’t,” I say honestly. “I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

  She moves from foot to foot like someone standing on hot coals, and then takes a sudden step forward. “I wanted to say that I’m—” The phantom word “sorry” forms on her lips, but she can’t force herself to say it. I watch as she opens and closes her mouth. She throws her hands up. “Look at me, standing here like a puppet. I can say it. I’m not a child.” She stands straight, arms at her sides, and blurts out the words, “I’m sorry, okay? I never should’ve told everybody about you being pregnant. It wasn’t right. I shouldn’t have. It was wrong of me. Okay? Okay?”

  Part of me wants to make her suffer, to tell her that it’s not okay, to tell her that I don’t forgive her. Part of me wants to just shake my head and walk out of the breakroom, leaving her to decide how I feel. But if I want any kind of future here, I need to learn to take an apology when it’s offered, especially since what she did wasn’t on the same level as Peter. It was bad, but it wasn’t that bad.

  “Okay,” I say. “But don’t forget, Brittany, that we’re just work friends.”

  I leave her before she can reply, and then I spot Molly motioning for me to come over. She tells me Ms. Silva wants to see me. Swallowing a dry lump and leaving my coffee forgotten on Molly’s desk, I go to the elevator.

  “Well,” Sofia Silva says, smoothing down her dark blue business jacket. “This certainly makes for interesting reading.” She watches me steadily. She has small brown eyes, the kind of eyes which make me feel like she can see right through me. And then she smiles. “You’ve done good work here. To be honest, I was reading this document to ascertain your writing and reporting ability more than to ascertain the facts. The fact is this. Chino was an evil sonofabitch and I’m glad he’s dead. That stuff in his apartment … No, we can’t have that. I read your dossier on stringers, too, which interested me greatly. I’ve been called a hothead in the past, and maybe what I’m about to say will make people call me a hothead in the future.”

  “Ms. Silva?” I ask, when she just stares at me silently.

  “I have been speaking with Molly. I am confident that Peter’s position is going to be open soon, and it is my intent to
offer it to you.”

  “The head of the department?” My voice sounds very far away. “But why?”

  “Because of the look on your face right now,” Sofia Silva says. “Because I know you’ll work twice as hard as anybody else just to prove yourself. And because every mother should be able to make their child proud. Go, have your baby. When you come back, you’ve got a job with us.”

  I leave the office with a tentative smile on my face. I can’t quite believe that it’s real. But she’s wrong, I reflect. I won’t work twice as hard. I’ll work three times as hard to make up for the lies in Chino’s report. Four times as hard, even.

  I ride the elevator back to my floor, giddy with budding excitement. I can’t wait to tell Diesel.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Diesel

  It’s damn weird saying goodbye to a woman and then returning to my apartment with nothing to do. I kiss Willa at the door, tell her I’m proud of her for getting her new job, and then I sit on the couch with no clue what to do. I have to figure out what’s next for me. There has to be something a man like me can do.

  I lift weights for an hour or so, feeling the familiar tear in my muscles. I’m dangerously close to feeling useless so I leave the apartment and climb on my bike. Even with the patch of my leather jacket picked off, I can still ride. I ride around the city, enjoying the feeling of the engine beneath me, and then stop at a shopping mall. I walk around, idly looking in store windows, for the first time in my life without something pressing to do. Before I would always be running away from my dad, and then I’d be running for the club, and then I’d be surviving in the slammer, and finally I’d be burning for Grimace. But now I can just walk around, bored. It’s such a strange thing, to be allowed to be bored.

  I feel the wad of cash in my pocket just to make sure it’s there. I really need to get a proper job, a pay-into-the-bank job. If I’m going to be with Willa, I need to reenter society. I don’t want to admit it, even to myself, but the thought scares the shit out of me. I’ve never done any of the stuff society expects you to do. I never finished school and the idea of college was a joke. I never had a mortgage, a bank account that I used more than once a month, anything. The fear that’s hounded me since Chino died and Grimace left returns to me now. What if Willa changes her mind? What if she decides she doesn’t want to be with me anymore?

  As I walk around the mall, hands in my pocket, listening to the pop music playing dimly through the muffled speakers, I can’t shake the thought. I need to make our connection permanent. I need to show her how much I want this to last. Because if I’ve never been this free, I’ve also never been this scared of losing that freedom. All my hopes are pinned on Willa and the kid now. They’re everything to me.

  I linger outside the jewelry stop for a long time, staring into the glass. I’ve never been in a fancy store like this. The door is made of pristine glass, shining in the yellow mall lights, and inside I spot a man in a business suit standing behind the counter. For a kid who’s lived on the streets, walking into this store should be unthinkable. The girls I rolled with before Willa didn’t expect stuff this fancy. But Willa deserves it, I tell myself. And if I really want to be with her for the rest of my life, I shouldn’t do any of this half-measures shit.

  The man in the business suit emerges from the store, smiling at me warily. He’s smiling at me like he thinks I’m gonna smash the glass and steal the jewels. I think about toying with him a little, asking him when the store closes or how often they get deliveries, but that’s the sort of stuff old Diesel would’ve enjoyed. I have no taste for it. It’d just seem cruel. Instead, I offer him my best normal-person smile and ask, “Can you show me your collection of engagement rings, please?”

  The man’s wary smile shifts to an accommodating one when I take out my wallet.

  Twenty minutes later, I’m climbing on my bike, more nervous than I was when that cop and I were holed up in the bathroom. As I ride back to the apartment, I can’t tell if it’s the bike’s engine or my heartbeat which are making my chest tremble so badly. I return to the apartment, hiding the ring box under the pillow and pacing up and down, no clue what to do. This isn’t right. A man my age shouldn’t be hanging around at home with no plan for the day.

  I slump on the couch and turn on the TV. That’s when I notice it, resting on the coffee table under the coaster (Willa bought the coasters, as well as arranging for the place to be repaired after my rampage). It’s a flyer advertising recruitment for the fire service, with three firefighters holding a hose and looking menacingly at the camera. Make a Difference! the caption reads. I pick it up, wondering if a man like me could really do this, tame fires instead of start them. Or maybe she was joking when she left it here. Maybe the idea is ridiculous and I’m completely misjudging the situation. Dammit, I wish I’d spent more time learning people and less time hurting them back in the day. Life’d be much simpler now.

  I make myself a coffee, staring at the flyer all the while. There’s a number at the bottom. I drink one and a half mugs of coffee, trying to convince myself that I can call the number, that no harm will come from me calling the number. I keep expecting my dad or Grimace to pop up from behind the couch, laughing meanly. “You’re not serious,” they’d say. “A man like you? Do you really think you’ve changed?”

  Today is a day of nerves, ’cause when I dial the number my goddamn hands are shaking. I feel like a little kid again, waiting at the stop of the stairs and wondering if my bedroom door is going to be strong enough to stop Dad from breaking through.

  The lady who answers has a friendly, chirpy voice.

  “So, would you like to come to an assessment day?” she asks after about two minutes of chitchat.

  “Shit, really?” I curse myself in my head. It’s going to be hard to forget I’m not around bikers. “I mean, um, sure, sure. It’s just …” It’s just I’ve burned down several buildings and I feel strange about this, even though I really want it and it’d sure as hell beat pointlessly hanging around the apartment. And maybe it’d make up for all the bad I’ve done, eventually.

  “Sir?” she prompts, when I don’t finish.

  “Nothing,” I say. “It’s nothing. Yes, I’d like to come to an assessment day.”

  “Fantastic. Let me get your details.”

  “Damon Holmes,” I tell her. The first thing I’ll do when Willa gets home is tell her I lied about legally changing my name to Diesel. I meant to sooner but it slipped my mind.

  “How’s Sherlock?” the woman asks, giggling.

  I make myself return the laugh. I guess I’ll have to get used to that joke.

  She gives me the details and we hang up the phone. I check the clock. It’s only one o’clock in the afternoon. I’ve never been much of a biblical man, but idle hands and devils come to mind. I work out again, this time doing my legs and my back, and then take a shower. I watch TV, and then somehow end up at the local library, picking out three books which don’t look too difficult to read. I used to like reading as a very little kid, before I was too scared to lose myself in a book just in case someone snuck up on me. I lose myself now, though, and soon the front door is opening.

  I get Willa a glass of juice and myself a beer, and we sit on the couch. When I tell her about my legal name not being Diesel, she leans across and slaps me playfully on the arm. “So all this time you were a dirty, filthy liar.” She pouts at me. “How are you going to make it up to me, then?”

  “Hang on.” I go into the bedroom and take my matches from the pocket of my leather. I quit smoking without really thinking about it after Willa threw my cigarette to the curb all those months ago, but I still have the matches for some reason. Then I go into the kitchen and find the candles Willa bought a couple of days ago. I bring the lighted candle into the living room, laying it on the table. “I can honestly say I’ve never lit a candle for a lady before. You ought to consider yourself lucky.”

  “Are you going to make me dinner, too?” She laughs.
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  There’s a challenge in that laugh, I reflect. She doesn’t think, in a million years, I’d make her dinner. “Yes!” I snap, making for the door.

  “Where are you going?” she asks, following me.

  “The store.”

  She hurries after me. “Please let me come. I don’t want you returning with a pineapple and a can of tomatoes or something.”

  We end up returning with a can of pasta sauce, some pasta, and some vegetables which will apparently go wonderfully with it. Willa does the cooking in the end, but I help by watching her do the cooking. We talk about everything and nothing, about football and how Willa has never really enjoyed it, about an idea for a novel she’s got about an arsonist cowboy and a nun.

  “It’ll be a Western,” she says.

  “And I’m the cowboy, but do you really reckon you’re a nun, Willa?”