by Paula Cox
I bring my bike to a stop in the parking lot of a supermarket, busy in the buildup to Christmas. I’ll grab a snack, maybe a couple of beers, and just take a stroll. I need to find Kayla so that I can find Silvertongue’s killer; I repeat this to myself like a mantra, as though I can trick myself into believing my feelings have nothing to do with it.
I’ll get a six-pack, get a little tipsy, probably just stay the night at a motel and ride back in the morning. It’s good to give Dogma the experience as VP, anyway, and there isn’t anything massive happening right now. All the deals are solid, nothing is turbulent.
I stroll into the store, wondering what type of beer to get, thinking about getting a hotdog and seeing if they can nuke it for me in the back. Some stores let you do that. The little stores they had whilst I was growing up had no problem with that. These huge ones, which are more like buying factories, aren’t so keen on it, but people tend to do what I ask, especially now I have this big black beard.
I grab a six-pack, and make my way past serial shoppers to the refrigerated section. I’ve just picked up a ready-to-nuke hotdog when I hear it. A voice which tugs me back over a year to a crumbling building full of dead bikers; a voice which tugs me back to moaning pleasure; a voice which pulls me back to the times where I shared, and listened, and made love. Made fuckin’ love like a man like me never does.
I cock my head, listening, telling myself I’m just hearing things.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.”
I turn at that, thinking she’s talking to a man, and already I know that I’m going to fuck this guy up. Foolish of me, but I never claimed to be Einstein. But then I see her, see her, really see her. She’s there. I blink, once, twice. Yes, she’s there. Kayla Pearson, wearing one of those kangaroo baby-carrier, a little baby girl looking up at her. She’s holding a basket filled with baby stuff and a few vegetables.
I stare at her as she makes her way down the aisles, as people drift between us, wondering if what I am seeing is real. Wondering if life can really be this crazy. The baby . . . I look past her, watching for a man. Who the fuck’s baby is that? Mine. Is that my kid? I swallow, a big ball moving down my neck. The time would match up; the kid looks about the right age, maybe a couple of months, but I’ve never been good with kids’ ages.
I realize that I’m approaching her, like my legs are moving without me telling them to, like there’s some force in me that wants to see her again so badly it doesn’t care about my input.
“Kayla.”
She looks up, gasps, drops the basket. The baby begins to cry. Kayla takes a step back.
“Dante?”
Chapter Eighteen
Kayla
The drop of the basket is loud. It sets Sandra off, who has a loud, ear-shattering cry at the best of times. But for a moment I do not hear the crash of the basket or Sandra’s cries. I do not hear anything but Dante saying my name, and then I hear myself say his name in response. We look watch other over Sandra’s head; I feel my mouth falling open. Dante, here, after a year . . . standing in front of me. All this time, I have fantasized about this moment, thinking about what I’d say. During childbirth, I fantasized about Dante crashing through the door and holding my hand and wiping sweat from my forehead.
Now, he is here, but he’s changed. His beard is thick, bushy, manly, and his eyes seem darker somehow. He has grown his hair out a little, too, giving him a rugged half-wild look. But it’s more than his appearance. It’s like I can sense his difference toward me, his expression more open than before. Or maybe I am just imagining that, wishing for that.
Then I remember that I am a mother, and I soothe Sandra, give her the pink pacifier she loves so much. Soon, she is sucking and resting her head on my chest. Dante leans down and picks up the basket for me.
“The kid?”
“My employer’s,” I say at once, panicking, the lie coming out before I even think about it. “I am working as babysitter slash housekeeper now. The baby is my employer’s.”
“Oh,” Dante says. “For a second I thought . . .” He shakes his head, and his longish hair moves across his forehead. “This is strange, Kayla. I—” He pauses, and then says, “This is strange as hell.”
We move around the store, me filling the basket as Dante holds it, and after I pay, he follows me out to my car, an old Ford that I got with a loan that Macy co-signed for. Dante loads the groceries into the trunk as I settle Sandra into her car seat in the back, making sure she is secure, giving her a little kiss on the head.
Then Dante and I are standing in the winter cold next to my car, looking at each other. After a moment, he says, “Come here.” He leans in, and we hug. It’s as awkward as a hug can be, but there’s real warmth there, too. I want to keep on holding him, keep gripping the leather of his jacket, keep feeling the way his beard brushes up against my forehead, tickling.
“Let me drop off . . .” I pause, not saying her name. Sandra—named after both our mothers. If I say her name, he might see through the lie. “Let me drop off this bundle of joy, and then—and then I guess we’ll meet for a drink or something?” I feel silly, wondering if I’m overstepping.
But Dante nods at once. “Sure. Know anywhere round here?”
“There’s a place just around the corner. I think it’s called The Brians, or something, because two men named Brian own it.”
Dante nods again. “Alright. I’ll wait there for you, then?”
“Yes.”
I can see he’s about to offer to drive, but before he can, I climb into the car. I need time to think. I need time to process this all.
But I don’t have as much time as I might like. The drive back to Macy’s doesn’t take long, and then I’m handing Sandra over to Macy, and Macy is eyeing me suspiciously. Over a year with her, and the old woman still has that youthful, azure glint in her eye.
“Something is happening,” Macy says. “You’re meeting someone.”
“Yeah right!” I exclaim, too loudly, protesting too much.
We stand in the inner hallway, near the front door. As I detach the papoose and hand Sandra to Macy, Sandra whimpers quietly for a few moments before settling into the old woman’s arms. Macy smiles, strokes the baby’s cheek, and then tilts her head at me knowingly. “Dear,” she says. “I have lived too long to not know when something is afoot. Oh, yes, yes, call me Ms. Holmes, dear. Now, I will not ask if you are meeting a man, but I will ask you this. Should we expect you back tonight?”
I swallow, wondering if this makes me a bad mother. But when I shake my head, Macy just giggles, and then starts oohing and aahing over Sandra.
“Okay, dear. See you tomorrow.”
“Only maybe,” I say. “Only maybe to not expecting me home. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Macy strolls down the hallway, shaking her head and talking to Sandra about all sorts of nonsense. As I watch them go, I feel a pang in my chest. Here it is: what Mom could have been, had she not been a Movement woman, had she not been killed too young. She could have one day become a strong sassy old lady with an iron glint in her eye. I turn away, and push back out into the winter cold, and in a matter of minutes I’m driving back into town toward the Brians. About forty-five minutes has passed since I left, and the sky is darker, the sun almost completely set. I pull a coat tightly around me as I walk down the sidewalk, and then breathe in the warmth and smell of whisky and beer when I walk into the bar.
Dante is sitting at a table on his own, forefinger moving around the rim of a glass of whisky. He couldn’t look any cooler if he tried. His beard is wild, so wild at first it takes me a second to recognize him. He has draped his leather over the back of his chair, and he’s wearing a checkered shirt with the sleeves rolled up, showing his thorn-tattooed arms. I feel my legs becoming weak as I approach him, as though the weight of this past year, the secrets and the longing and the constant reminders, are weighing me down. Winter to winter, conception to birth, fear to almost-confidence, and here we are
yet again, the rodent and the man who saved her.
But things are different now. I have his child, even if he doesn’t know it, even if he doesn’t know he has a child.
The Brians is one of those bars which exist somewhere between grimy and respectable, everything clean and polished, but with a decommissioned rifle above the bar, and a barman who looks messy but not like a complete waster. There are a few alcoholic types in here, old men sitting dead-eyed at the bar, but mostly it’s men and women in their thirties dancing to Britney Spears on the jukebox and looking for a good time. I navigate the dancefloor, and then make my way to the quieter end and the tables.
He glances up when I reach his table, and smiles, but he looks oddly unsure of himself. I can’t blame him. I feel unsure of myself, too. He gestures at the barman. “What do you want?” he asks.
I tell him I’ll have a coke.
“Alright.”
Dante calls over, and the barman brings it over. I take off my coat. Underneath, I’m wearing a hoodie and jeans, and my hair feels like it’s a mess; I don’t cut it myself these days, but it still somehow always ends up messy. Even wearing these clothes, Dante’s eyes are drawn to my body. His gaze lingers on my breasts, on the outline of them in the hoodie. My nipples get hard right away, as though invisible beams are travelling from his irises to the sensitive tips of my breasts. I remember the pleasure this man gave me, the pleasure we shared, the writhing, his huge cock, my pussy aching for it. I have not touched another man since we parted. I haven’t been able to stomach even the idea of it.
I sip my coke, and then Dante says, “I need to ask you about that night in the warehouse.”
“Is this business?” I respond, perhaps too sharply.
Dante nods shortly. “Yes, this is business. I need to know if you remember anything at all.”
I can tell he’s holding something back. His emotions, it seems like. It’s as if there is a wealth of emotion behind his jet-black eyes, in the curve of his lips, even in the way he strokes the rim of the glass of whisky, but he does not want to share it with me—or maybe he can’t. Or maybe, I reflect, I am just seeing emotion where there is none.
“Okay,” I say. “Fine.”
I think back for a long time, until both our drinks are gone and the barman brings another.
In the end, I can’t tell him anymore than I told him last year.
He sighs, and then nods.
“Are you leaving now, then?” If I sound bitter, it’s because I am. One year without this man, fantasizing about him, and now he treats me like a witness in a court case.
But Dante says, “No, I am not leaving. I just needed to get that out of the way, Kayla.”
He offers me a small smile. The moment he smiles at me like that—cocky, and yet with genuine warmth—I feel like I have been thrown back a year into the past, and he and I are just two lost people sitting in an office drinking whisky, sharing the pain of our pasts. Dante always held back, I could sense it, but he shared with me nonetheless. About his mother, about the orphanage. I realize something else, too. I love this man. I have loved this man since the moment he saved me. And having his child has only amplified that love.
“So now what?” I ask.
Dante looks past me to the dancefloor. “Look at them,” he says. “Do you ever remember being that carefree, Kayla? Most of them look like they’re around my age, and they’re dancin’ and gigglin’ like little kids.”
“Easy childhoods,” I say, with a grim smile. “But I don’t blame them for it. It’s not their fault.”
“No, it’s not.”
We watch each other for a time, and then Dante gestures to his beard. “Do you like it?”
“It makes you look mad.”
He laughs, and I laugh with him. The pleasure rushes to my head all at once. I suddenly feel lightheaded. I’ve laughed plenty of times with Macy over the past year, but with Dante there’s more to it. Our laughter clashes in the air, sparks of feeling flying back at us. Our laughter starts a fire under the table, heating our legs. Our laughter is a fan blowing away the dust of the past year: the dust that has coated lust and love and affection and attraction and any interest in the opposite sex. Of course, maybe Dante has been with other women, but I don’t think he has—I hope he hasn’t, anyway.
“I guess I’ve always been mad,” Dante says. He orders a water.
“Water?” I raise my eyebrow.
“Gotta stay sharp,” he says, the depths of his sea-black eyes shifting. When it arrives, he asks, “So, what’ve you been up to this past year?”
I’ve been pregnant with your baby, given birth to your baby, and now I am focused on housekeeping and raising your baby. I want to tell him, badly. I really do. But part of me worries that if I just come out and tell him now, he’ll get up and leave, just like that. Maybe I assume that because that’s how I might’ve reacted in my stealing, lying days, or maybe because it’s the truth, or maybe because you can never expect a man to react warmly to a sudden revelation like that. Whatever the reason, I will not tell him, not tonight.
“Cleaning and cooking, mostly,” I say.
I tell him as much as I can without admitting either Macy’s age or who’s baby Sandra is. If he learns that Macy is seventy years old, it’ll be obvious the baby he saw isn’t hers. I tell him a widow hired me and lets me live in the house rent free in exchange for me keeping house and caring for the child.
“Sounds like a decent gig,” he says, nodding. “You seem changed, Kayla.”
“Changed how?”
“I don’t know. Less . . . less skittish. Let me ask you this. This woman—you stealin’ from her?”
I blush, remembering the day with the plastic bag and the jewels. That day has become a turning point in my life: I could’ve walked down the road and solidified my status as a rodent, but instead I turned back and became something new.
“No,” I say. “I am not. I am done with that.”
Dante smiles. “That’s great.”
“What about you? Anything exciting happen in the past three-hundred and sixty-five days, give or take a few dozen?”
He scoffs. “Nah, just the same old, same old.”
I swallow, and then force myself to ask, “And any . . . uh, any . . . any romantic attachments?”
I look down at the table. I know it is not my place to ask him. As far as he is concerned, I ran out on him. He has every right to—
“No,” he says at once. “And let me tell you, Kayla, that’s damn strange for me. Before you, I had plenty of women, and now, no one, in an entire year. Do you see how odd that is?”
“I thought you’d be angry,” I say, “after I ran out.”
Dante shakes his head. “I was awake, Kayla. I could’ve stopped you. I listened to you leave.”
That hits me in the chest. “Oh.”
He leans forward, resting his forearms on the table. My hands are resting on the table, and all it would take is for me to reach out with my fingers to touch those muscular arms. “I was scared, Kayla,” he says. Looking into his hard, bearded face, it’s difficult to believe he would ever be scared of anything. “I was scared shitless, is the truth. You were scratching away pieces of me. It’s like—I kept thinkin’ that you were ripping my ribcage apart and prodding at my heart.” He laughs, gruff. “That sounds damn strange when I say it out loud, but it’s how I felt.”
“Is that why you started being distant, and snappy?” I ask, staring into his eyes. These eyes have stared at me every night in my dreams this past year, but my dreams can never compare to the real thing. “Is that why you started being cold?”
“Yes,” he says. “I reckon so.”
“And that’s why you didn’t stop me leaving.”
“Yes.”
“So what’s changed? Aren’t you still afraid I’m going to—to prod your heart, or whatever you called it?”
Dante nods, leans back. “Yeah, I guess I am. But I guess I’m more afraid of going another year with
out seeing you. Listen, I thought you were too young, too vulnerable, too similar to what I might have—” All at once, he stops, seizing up, clenching his fists, temples pulsing. He shakes his head briskly, drinks his water. I watch, bemused, wondering what the hell happened.
“Dante,” I say. “What’s wrong?”
He shakes his head again. “It’s nothing.”
“Nothing?” I say. “Something is clearly wrong.”
“It’s just—I’ve never talked about this, to anybody, ever.”
“And it has something to do with why you became cold, and why you let me leave?”
“Kayla, it has everything to do with that.”
