by Hazel Parker
“You got nothing to worry about, Uncle,” I said, extending my hand. “I got this.”
“Yes, you do,” Uncle said, shaking my hand. “It’s a deal, Marcel. I hope you’re serious about knowing there are no closing hours from now until a long, long way away.”
“I know,” I said. “I guess it won’t be waking up early if I never go to sleep.”
Chapter 4: Christine
I woke up sober.
Sixty days straight now, I’d been sober. I’d officially been clean for two months, my longest streak since I started making the effort to get sober.
Lying in bed in an oversized t-shirt and gym shorts, I felt proud of myself. I even gave a smile, no small feat for the early morning. But the smile faded when I remembered what day of the week it was.
Friday. Also known as the start of the weekend.
Weekends were always the hardest, and I could never quite explain in understandable terms why they were so difficult. The best analogy I could draw was telling someone that being a recovering alcoholic on the weekend was like someone trying to lose weight having to go to a buffet every Friday and Saturday.
During the week, there were only so many options for drinking, and they were often too inconvenient to make happen. Yes, I could have purchased alcohol and brought it to the apartment, but I was never really much of a solo drinker. When I got in groups, though, the shit hit the fan, and it was not uncommon for me to get so drunk that people had to take me home—and sometimes, those people were men who saw an opportunity, not someone who needed help.
Weekends opened up that buffet. Now, instead of having to go thirty people deep into my contact list to find someone to drink with, I had a glutton’s worth of options. It wasn’t a matter of if I could get someone to go out; it was more just choosing whom I most wanted to see. A night out with girlfriends? A date with a man? A couple of liquid courage drinks for a friend with benefits? The options were endless.
And even now, having gone to AA meetings, having been sober for two months, having told multiple friends that I needed to avoid alcohol at all costs, I still struggled with it. The challenge was balancing not drinking with actually having a life. Because right now, things were pretty damn dull and boring.
How long was long enough before I could start putting myself back out there? In those sixty days, I’d had zero dates. I’d had zero nights going out. The closest I’d come was a dinner that stretched until about nine-thirty, and as soon as that had ended, I’d made a beeline to get home, claiming I didn’t feel well.
I tried to rationally tell myself that I was not yet ready. I needed to hit a hundred days before the desire for booze completely wore off. I needed to detox in that fashion.
But then… I thought about the guy I’d seen at Egg yesterday. How he’d come twice. How handsome he was. How Sue had told me I should have made it more obvious to him.
No, no, that was ridiculous. I couldn’t flirt with my customers. Jessica had said as much. But she’s not you, and you’re not her. Maybe it’s best for her. You really think it’s best for you, though?
But then again, do you think it’s best for you to be hitting on customers who are like… well, him?
My mind was racing, and it had a tendency to get caught up in these circular thinking patterns that were all but impossible to break while I was lying still. I kicked the covers off, went to my canvas, and decided just to start painting whatever came to mind. Painting, after all, not only broke those thought cycles, but made everything clearer.
The first thing that came to mind was to paint a man leaning over a railing, looking at Manhattan. The image conjured parallels to many fantasy novel covers I had seen, where a lone soldier stood before an enormous castle, one man against the entire weight of the nation or kingdom. Similarly, this man—who wound up being a bald man in a red button-down shirt—looked up at the entirety of capitalism. Was he staring it down? Was he trying to rise up to it?
I never thought of themes when I painted. I always felt that was something left to the consumer of the art rather than its creator; the few times I had tried to paint with a theme in mind, inevitably, those who saw it would miss the point and go for something of a completely different ilk. Trying to predict how people would interpret my work was a far more difficult task than just painting whatever came to mind and letting it come out.
I had the painting sketched out, though not colored in, when my phone started to ring. This was a morning of many firsts—waking up two months sober, waking up somewhat early before my shift started, and now having someone call me before five in the afternoon. My boss at Egg preferred to text—he was, after all, a millennial like us—so he wouldn’t have called. I waded over to my phone and pursed my lips when I saw who it was.
Tucker Ross, an older associate at my old job.
Though he was higher up the chain, he was not the boss that I had slept with. But I was quite sure that if Tucker had his way, he would have been the second boss I would have slept with, and the first one I would have slept with repeatedly. Tucker hadn’t spoken to me since the day I got fired.
“Tucker?” I said, hoping the surprise in my voice would make it obvious I needed some explanations from him.
“Christine! How are you?”
“I am… fine,” I said, feeling like this was a strange question to ask given my exit. “What’s going on?”
“What’s going on?” he said, giving one of those fake rich-man laughs that suggested he was “just playing with me” or some other stupid line. “I’m just checking in on a former colleague and making sure that she’s doing OK! Have you landed a job since?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Oh, great! Where at?”
“A well-known place in Brooklyn.”
It wasn’t a lie, at least not in the literal sense. The lack of complete truth, though, had less to do with me being embarrassed about working at Egg than it did just not wanting to engage with Tucker when I still had no idea what the hell he was doing.
“Awesome. Well, Miss Gathers, I would love to catch up with you over a drink sometime, perhaps even as soon as this evening if you are interested.”
“Oh, well.”
Fortunately, the risk of temptation was zero here. Even though it was one of the most hungover mornings I had ever had in my life, I could still remember Tucker acting the way he did at my old job. To say that I did not miss him was the truest thing I’d thought all morning.
“No, thank you.”
“Are you sure? We’re starting to recruit for next summer, and we could use someone with experience to help guide the newbies. You know how it is. They think they’re going to do God’s work when in reality they just push coffee mugs and papers and stare at screens. They need someone who has been there and done that.”
Done what, exactly? Drank into oblivion because of the pressures of the job? Tried drugs she swore she would never try? Hooked up with people she never considered attractive?
“Yes, I’m sure. Thanks, Tucker.”
“Oh, too bad! Well, I’ll try again on a day when you’re less sure. Enjoy your weekend. Bye!”
He didn’t give me a chance to respond before he hung up. I stared at the phone, wondering just what the hell had happened. My old boss, the one who had fired me, wanted me to have a drink with him? Tucker was known as a womanizer, but he was usually smart enough not to do it with coworkers.
Then again, I guess I wasn’t a coworker anymore. I wasn’t anything related to Wall Street or the firm anymore. I was a Brooklynite now, a waitress at Egg, a painter, a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
It was a status I much preferred to my old life, frankly. A lot less stressful. A lot more relaxing.
* * *
I didn’t get to finish my painting, but work went off without a hitch. Marcel was nowhere to be seen for the first six hours of my shift, but that worked fine with me. I would have much preferred to have run into him on Monday or Tuesday, not on a day when he could ask me out and it could be rela
ted to booze.
Banter with Sue was light. She either had forgotten Marcel or just didn’t think it was something worth discussing. The customers were nice and easy.
And then, at four, it all changed.
There was Marcel, walking in. And, I swear to God, he was wearing a red button-down shirt.
Granted, it was a different hue than the one I had painted in the morning. It was much darker, almost like he was going to a funeral or something. But it was definitely on the red spectrum.
It was probably just a coincidence. Actually, no, it definitely was a coincidence. But still, after being through AA and learning to give myself up to a higher power, I had long ago learned that coincidences were rarely just that. It was a word used by people who wanted to lazily diagnose something.
“Hello again,” I said, trying to find the right balance between a little bit of flirting and not being so over the top as to make it obvious. “Have you come for another bountiful feast?”
“Not quite.”
His voice seemed a little more flat than usual. I’d only met this man twice, and met was a very loose term, but I could see something was bugging at him. Good luck to me ever trying to figure out what the hell that was, though.
“Oh? Then what?”
“I’ve got a meeting with some gentlemen in here who will be arriving in, say, the next five to ten minutes or so. We’re all… larger than life, let’s say.”
He gave a half-hearted smile that faded quickly as if he’d thought it was worth the effort before deciding against it. I tried to smile, but I, too, felt like I shouldn’t be doing this. Just because I’d had some questions for myself before this went down about if I needed to start putting myself out there or not didn’t mean I needed to start right this moment. If anything, it was a sign that I needed to move slowly; the beginning was always the most treacherous time.
“That’s good,” I finally said, which felt like the weakest thing I could say that still qualified as professional. “More guys like you?”
Marcel snorted, folded his arms.
“Not nearly as handsome.”
We both shared a short laugh at that—a laugh much shorter than if it had taken place the day before. I then laughed again, as if to make up for the short laugh, but that only made it worse.
“Well, we’ll be happy to serve you whenever you guys come in.”
And then, right on cue, the door swung open. Four other men—one of whom had been with Marcel the end of my shift before—walked in. One of them had gray hair, clearly demarcating him as older from the rest. One, an African-American man with buzzed hair and dark eyes, had something in his pocket that looked an awful lot like a gun, but I suspected he was not about to come and rob us. The last one almost looked comically out of place. While everyone else looked gruff and like they had just come from a blue-collar convention, the last guy looked like someone I would have worked with before my AA days. He was dressed in a nice button-down, expensive shoes, and had a professional-looking haircut.
“We’re going to be hungry,” Marcel says. “So hopefully you’ll still be happy after dealing with all of us. Most of all, me.”
He gave me a short smile and a wink, one that, even by wink standards, seemed to go by abruptly quickly. I waited until he exchanged hugs and handshakes with everyone and led him and his crew to the table, feeling the heat rising in my stomach and chest as I tried to comprehend just what the hell there was—if anything—between us. Marcel gave me a nod after I placed the menus and stepped away.
I made myself busy as I cleaned up other tables and arranged utensils, but in reality, I was eavesdropping. I only needed one line to have my curiosity quite piqued.
“Gentlemen,” Marcel began. “Let us begin the first meeting of the Savage Saints, Brooklyn chapter.”
Chapter 5: Marcel
I didn’t want to get dragged into a prolonged flirting session with Christine.
Not because she wasn’t cute. Actually, it was the opposite—she was way too sexy. And it had only been the night before that I’d spoken to my daughter, and only a few hours before that, Uncle had come in and rudely disrupted my morning. This was a time for focusing on what mattered, and hot as she was and probably as great a lay as she was, Christine could not occupy my time.
Nothing really could except the MC and Lilly. Truthfully, the right attitude was fuck everything else.
It just so happened that a little overlap took place. Because here, not at the shop that Biggie worked out of, was our initial meeting of the Savage Saints.
There was me, Marcel Stone. Everyone tended to either know me or get to know me quickly because of my presence. I wasn’t gregarious like my little brother or well-dressed like Fitz was, but my size, my stern look, and just the way I carried myself made me usually stand out. Yeah, it was a little self-flattering, but even criminals needed confidence boosts.
To my right was Lane “Niner” Bentley, Biggie’s former police friend who had joined on as our sergeant-at-arms. I didn’t know much about Niner other than that he carried a 9mm with him everywhere he went, he smiled less than I did when speaking with my ex-girlfriend, and he had something happen to him while he worked in the NYPD that caused him to leave. I suspected that it was not in my best interest to know; I didn’t think it would make a difference in having him on. If Biggie trusted him, I trusted him.
To his right was Reggie “Uncle” Stone, obviously, my uncle. It wasn’t until we got our group together, though, that I realized just how old he looked. By no means was anyone going to mistake him for a grandfather, but years working in the white-collar environment and having to suppress his true Stone self had grayed his temples and wrinkled his face. He was a man who was perhaps the best chameleon of all of us. He could have just as easily fit in with the wolves on Wall Street as he could have with the oil-smothered bucks in the mechanic shop.
To his right and now on my left side of vision was Thomas “Fitz” Fitzgerald, who most assuredly was not the chameleon of the group. He wore glasses, had actual hair, wore a shirt that wasn’t stained or otherwise ruined in any way, and didn’t swear like we did. I had no idea why the fuck he actually wanted a part in this and didn’t just give Uncle some money to invest—probably some suit who wanted to live out his fantasies as a real badass. So long as he added value to us, he could have dressed like a lady and I wouldn’t have given a fuck.
Finally, to his right and to my left, completing our little jagged circle, was Biggie, my brother, and one of the few people whom I trusted unconditionally in the world. I’d say it was because we were brothers, but my other brother had shown coming from the same pussy didn’t mean jack shit for trust.
“Gentlemen,” I said. “Let us begin the first meeting of the Savage Saints, Brooklyn chapter. I’m going to assume we all at least have a passing knowledge of each other. I don’t want this to turn into some stupid culture-building exercise where we give facts about ourselves. We’re an MC, not a church league. Does everyone here trust each other?”
The only real answer to that was “no fucking way.” I didn’t know Fitz, Fitz didn’t know Niner, Niner didn’t know Uncle—the whole thing was like some ugly line-crossing chart about who didn’t know who. But there was enough trust among those who knew each other to know that we had come together for a common cause and fuck anything stopping that cause. We’d build trust along the way or kick out whoever fucked us over in the process.
“Good, now then,” I said, taking a pause.
To the rest of them, it probably just looked like me taking a breath and considering my next words. In reality, it was a moment where I needed to acknowledge I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. I’d been out of jail less than a week, I hadn’t seen my little girl yet, I didn’t have a job, and yet suddenly, I was running a fucking motorcycle club.
God had either fucked me in the ass with the thorniest branch yet, or he’d given me a life-saving opportunity that in no way was I prepared for.
“The firs
t step is figuring out how to build out the club,” I said, no one the wiser of the internal screaming match in my head. “Uncle has said that we’re going to buy out Biggie’s employer. We can turn it into something like Stone Services. It’s going to be tight, but it’s the fastest and, frankly, probably the best way to make fixes. It’s close to us, so we don’t have to go to the fucking Bronx to make it a reality.”
“And how much money is that gonna pull in?”
For the quietest person in the room, it was rather interesting that Niner had decided to speak first.
“There’s a reason that man is selling to your uncle, and it’s not because the owner is feeling charitable or your uncle gave him more than he asked for, I assume?”
“Hell no I’m still a fucking businessman,” Uncle said with a snort.
Over them, Christine hovered, trying to get a word in for drinks and food. I held up five fingers and said, “Water,” hoping that would buy us time. The poor girl looked terrified to approach the table, and I really couldn’t blame her. Coming up to the five of us and expecting us not to mind being interrupted was laughable.
“Cars are moving toward automation, and even the ones that aren’t need fewer repairs than ever before,” Niner went on. “You got all these bitch-ass hipsters buying electric cars, which I suppose is good for the environment, but it ain’t good for you. Yeah, you can charge more. Cool. You won’t be able to charge so much more to make up for the drop-off in quantity of repairs.”
“Oh, come on now,” Biggie said with a laugh, as he normally did. “This is Brooklyn! Not Miami! Everyone’s driving around a goddamn clunker!”
He laughed, but Niner never changed expression. Once Biggie got the hint, Niner cleared his throat and continued.
“If you really want money, we gotta supply something that is in huge demand and has no supply. And luckily for us, this city is one of the worst cities for regulations in the country. Especially when it comes to the second amendment.”
