by Naomi West
“Let someone else do it, then, and see how those people end up!” he explodes, shaking his head. “Let Grimace give the job to one of the psychotic fucks who’ll burn the place to the ground with fuckin’ babies in there! Let—” He cuts short, bringing his fist to his face like he’s going to bite it. Then he lets it drop and makes a growling sound from deep in his throat. “Goddamn, Willa.”
“So you did it,” I say. “You can’t take it back now.”
He stares at me silently.
“You really think I’m here to spy on you.”
“We don’t know each other at all.” He shakes out his arms as though trying to calm himself down. I’ve seen boxers do the same on TV. “We met last night. You can’t expect me to spill out my guts for you.”
“I expect no such thing,” I say. “And I want no such thing. I just want the truth.”
“So you’re going to be homeless soon?” he says. “You don’t have anybody to stay with, or anything?”
“So you’re just going to pretend like this conversation is over?”
“No family, no friends?”
I feel myself blush, even though there’s no need. “No,” I mutter.
“Shit,” he says. “That sucks. Well, I guess there’s only one thing for it, then. You’ll have to stay with me.”
“You’re joking,” I say. “This is a joke.”
“I don’t joke about serious business, and this is serious business.”
He takes two large steps and then all at once he’s standing over me, making me crane my neck back to look up at him. I remember his smell, the feel of his lips … for a passing moment it’s like he’s kissing me again. He leans down so that his lips are close to mine. And then he leans in, closer, closer, and my body is aching, aching for him, hungry for him. Just like last night, when my fingers moved despite myself, now I stand on my tiptoes, close my eyes, purse my lips. When I kiss, I kiss air.
I open my eyes and see him standing a foot away from me, arms folded, looking cool and distant. “Is that a yes or a no?”
Frustrated—sexually and otherwise—I fold my arms, so that we’re facing off. Gunslingers, but instead of guns we have scowls. Scowl-slingers, then. “That was mean,” I say. “That was really, really mean. And how can I agree to move in with you? Like you said, we don’t know each other at all.”
“Come on, I’m a classy kind of guy. You can’t expect me to kiss you here. My place, though …”
“A classy kind of guy?” I roll my eyes dramatically, tipping my head to bring the point home. “You could’ve fooled me.” I’m smiling, I realize, flirting. I’m smiling at and flirting with the man who burned down my apartment building.
“I don’t want you on the street,” he says. “That’s the fact. I promise I won’t try anything with you.”
“You just lied to me,” I say. “You just lied right to my face.”
He smiles, shrugs. “I never claimed to be an angel.”
“You never claimed to be a devil, either. In fact, so far you haven’t claimed to be anything.”
“Are you going to stay with me or not, Willa? I don’t like to ask twice.”
“Well excuse me for inconveniencing you.” I shake my head at him and put heavy irony into my voice. “I’d never want to do that. That would be an unfair thing to do.”
“Okay, okay, you’ve made your point. I still want an answer, though.”
“Tell me your name,” I say, taking a step forward. I want to be close to him again, to feel his breath on my face, to feel his arms around me, his lips pressed against mine. But I’m not going to make the move if he isn’t. “I don’t even know your name and you want me to move in with you.” I offer him my hand. “I’m Willa Holloway. It’s nice to meet you.”
He takes my hand. “I’m Diesel. It’s nice to meet you.”
Snatching my hand away, I snap, “I asked for your name, not your nickname.”
“I told you. My name is Diesel. Legally.”
“And your second name? Nobody has just one name.”
“I do.”
We watch each other for a few seconds in silence. I’m exasperated. I feel like I’ve gotten nowhere. And yet I’m also imagining what it would be like to take this man up on his offer. It’s crazy and it makes no sense, and yet I am drawn to the idea. It’s the kind of thing you hear about in magazines and in articles online, but which you’d never actually do.
“I sleep on the couch,” I say. But it’s like somebody else is speaking. This isn’t the Willa I know. “Or a spare room if you have one. You don’t touch me. You don’t look at me. We’re roommates, nothing more.”
“So you’ll be paying rent then?” He’s joking, I can tell. He raises his eyebrows and smiles. “I can give you my address or pick you up after work, your choice.”
“Pick me up,” I say, thinking, what the hell am I doing?
“All right, then. Meet me here after work. What time do you finish?”
“Half past five.”
“All right, then.” He climbs onto his bike.
“Aren’t you going to wear a helmet?” I ask.
He winks at me. “I only have one helmet, and I reckon I’ll give it to the lady. Climb on. I’m giving you a ride back to work.”
“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” I feel at a loss. I was going to be a journalist here. I was going to remember and document, observe, not get swept up in it. Even as I ask the question, I’m walking to his bike, taking the offered helmet, and putting it on my head.
“Hang on.” He takes off his leather jacket and hands it to me over his shoulder. That’s when I see the scars on his arms, crisscrossed and pale, starting at his wrists and disappearing in his T-shirt. “Take this.”
This is probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. Scratch that. This is one hundred percent the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. My only consolation is that lunchtime isn’t yet over. The office should still be empty. When I’m in the helmet and the jacket, I wrap my arms around his belly, holding onto the tight-packed muscle. Diesel kicks the bike and then I’m sitting on a vibrating hunk of metal. I’d be lying if I said the reverberations, along with the firmness of Diesel’s belly, don’t make me wish I was in bed.
He rides me halfway to work and then stops in another alleyway. The ride is short, around half a minute, and I’m frustrated when I have to climb off and let go of his belly.
“It would’ve been quicker to walk,” I say, “when you account for the time we’re wasting now.” I take off the jacket and the helmet and hand them to him.
“Quicker, sure, but not as fun.” He leans against his bike. “Go on then, Willa. I want to watch you walk away.”
I walk out the alleyway, feeling Diesel’s eyes on my ass and liking the feeling way more than I should.
When I get back to the office, suddenly the attention doesn’t seem so bad. The copy doesn’t seem so bad. Nothing seems as bad as it did half an hour ago.
Even Brittany’s pouting doesn’t annoy me. All I have to do is avoid thinking about if I’m making a terrible mistake.
Chapter Six
Diesel
I sit in the alleyway against my bike, chewing the wooden end of a matchstick and wondering what sort of bastard I’m going to be remembered as. Willa hit home, harder than she probably knows. Because she’s right. Of course she’s right. Just because I make sure I don’t end up a killer—at least by accident—that doesn’t mean what I’m doing doesn’t have consequences. I think about a kid again, as I have countless times before. My kid would be better than me, boy or girl. I’d make sure of it. My kid would never end up in the slammer. My kid would never end up an arsonist. The club is the club; the club is family. But does that mean I have to do this for the rest of my life?
I toss the matchstick to the concrete and think about lighting a cigarette. Then I remember how Willa threw the cigarette to the curb yesterday, and I decide against it. It’s the first time in my life I’ve gone without one
for a woman. I’m sure that says something.
When she doesn’t show up right away, I’m surprised by how nervous I’m getting. I want to spend tonight with Willa. I want to go back to my apartment and close the door to the world and pretend that the club doesn’t exist. Grimace has been getting on my case about this Chino bastard, telling me that Chino is going to be a big problem soon, telling me that we need to deal with him. I know it’s a matter of time before he asks me to torch another building, and maybe next time I won’t be able to get everybody out. Maybe next time I’ll end up burning innocents alive. I spit on the floor and pace the alleyway.
“Chino is the lowest of the low,” Grimace told me last night, hunched over in his president’s chair, his grizzled gray beard reaching almost down to the desk. Grimace is almost as big as me and looked damned strange hunched over like that, but he always sits in that way when he’s angry. It’s the only way I can tell, since his face is always so calm. “Nothing worse than a slumlord, Diesel,” he went on, though I could think of a few worse things. “Doesn’t respect his tenants, doesn’t respect the law, doesn’t respect anything, not even respect itself. Uses his damn buildings as fronts for drug dealing and money launderer. Gets pregnant women hooked on crack. He’s a real piece of shit, Diesel, a real piece of work.”
I nodded, reminding myself how much I owed this man.
When six o’clock arrives and she still isn’t here, I wonder if I should just cut my losses and get going. There’s nothing tying me to this woman except my interest in her. I don’t owe anything to her and she doesn’t owe anything to me. Sure, her legs are fine, her ass is fine, her tits are fine, and her face is beautiful. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to become a whole new man just for her.
When quarter past six arrives, I climb onto my bike, telling myself to kick it and get the hell out of here. I’m making a fool of myself. I’ve been with plenty women in my life, before and after prison, and I’ve never waited around like this. They’re normally the ones that do the waiting. If I was waiting on some club girl and she took this long, I’d leave without a second thought. But it seems with Willa all I’ve got is second thoughts.
Even once I’m on my bike, I don’t leave. I prolong every action. I take three times as long to put on my jacket, five times as long to put on my helmet, adjusting it when it doesn’t need adjusting. Then I’m ready and I don’t have anymore excuses. It’s either leave or stay here waiting on a woman like a bitch.
The engine growls, the wheels kick up bits of gravel, and then the engines dies. Willa is walking toward me.
I take off my helmet. “You took your time,” I say.
“How unacceptable of me,” she says, mock pouting. “How unbelievably monstrous of me.”
“You like to give guys a hard time, don’t you?”
“No.” She stops just short of my bike. “I just don’t think it’s my job to give guys a good time.”
“Fair enough.” I shrug. “Let’s get going. I’ve waited long enough already.”
I take off my jacket and hand it to her. She hesitates a moment and then takes it. A moment later she’s standing with the jacket in one hand and the helmet in another.
“You realize this is crazy,” she says. “I don’t know you. I don’t know your name. I don’t know the first thing about you.”
“You know my name.” I sigh. Is it always going to come back to the name?
“Diesel … What if you’re a serial killer or a rapist or something?”
“I’ve been called many things in my life, little lady, but never a serial killer or a rapist. I’ve never harmed a woman, and I never will.”
“Sexist,” she mutters.
“How’s that?”
“Well, what if a woman came at you with a machete and she was going to cut your head off? Would you harm her then?” She’s stalling for time, I reckon. She hasn’t made a move to put the jacket or the helmet on.
“I’ve never had a woman charge at me with any kind of weapon except her fists and a couple of times, a hairbrush.”
“You have a skill for making us angry then.”
“Since when are you a feminist champion, Willa? Are you going to put those on or what?”
“I was late because I was sitting at my desk wondering what to do.”
“And then you came here.”
She takes a step back, and then a step forward. She looks to the mouth of the alleyway where cars pass in the road, and then back at me. She shrugs, and then sighs, and then takes another small step forward.
“Are you dancing for me?” I ask.
That gets a laugh out of her, a small giggle. “Tell me I’m not crazy,” she says.
“You might be crazy,” I say.
“Wow, thank you. That was really helpful.”
“Look, Willa.” I lean forward, staring at her. I see her eyes go to my arms. Folks’ eyes always go to my arms, and my chest and back when my shirt’s off. Dad’s marks will never fade completely and the ones from the slammer are ridged and fresh. I ignore it. “One of two things is going to happen here. Either you’re going to get on my bike or you’re not. So make your decision.”
“Do you expect to persuade me by talking to me like that?”
I groan, looking up at the sky. “If it ain’t your job to give me a good time, it ain’t my job to persuade you. I’m counting to five in my head. Then I’m gone. I’ve been here for nearly an hour.”
I don’t really count to five. I just sit there, staring at her. After a while she shrugs on the jacket and pulls the helmet over her head. And then soon her hands are clutching onto my belly and we’re riding toward my apartment building. It’s just the two of us in the elevator, standing close together. She smells like perfume and soap with a light scent of sweat mixed with deodorant. It’s the best smell in the goddamn world, especially for a man who’s been in prison.
“Nice place,” she says, as the two of us walk into the apartment.
I can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic, but I wouldn’t blame her if she was. I haven’t really done much with the apartment, don’t know if I ever will. Sometimes when I get home I think about hanging up some pictures or whatever, but then I sit on the couch and put on the TV and I can’t see the reason why. There’s a living room and open-plan kitchen, two bedrooms. In one I have the bed and the other is full of boxes with motorcycle parts piled into them. There isn’t much in the way of personal touches, unless you count the bike parts and the one photograph I have on the wall: me and Grimace, the day I was released from prison, our arms around each other.
“Is this your dad?” she asks.
“No,” I say, smiling. “And yes.”
“You do realize how confusing that answer is, right?”
“No.” I smile wider. “And yes.”
She makes an exasperated sound. “Can I sit down?”
“Sure.” I go into the kitchen. “Drink?”
“What’ve you got?”
“Beer, and beer.”
“Beer, then.” She giggles. I really could get used to that sound.
I sit on the chair and she sits on the couch, so we’re half facing each other and half facing the TV. I switch on the TV and leave it on mute, some infomercial playing in the background. Then I sip my beer and look at her, just look at her. She’s so hot, I can’t take my eyes off her. Today her hair isn’t braided like it was yesterday. It hangs down to her shoulders straight.
“We’re going to need to get you some clothes,” I say, when I’m halfway through the beer.
“I guess so. It’s just …” She takes a long sip of her beer, maybe so she doesn’t have to finished her sentence.
“It’s just?”
“The fire.” Her shoulders sag. “It’s just the fire.”
“The fire,” I repeat, wishing I could go back in time and make it so I wasn’t born to my father, wishing that Mom didn’t die before looking into my face, wishing that the road that led me here had been demolished.
&n
bsp; A silence ensues. I unmute the TV and put on a music channel. Three beers later and I’m looking at her again, and she’s looking at me, even if she’s pretending not to. My eyes roam up her legs, to her breasts, her face. Her cheeks are flushed when she turns to me. The tension in the room is like something physical. It’s as if there’s an invisible person whispering, “Aren’t you going to kiss now? Aren’t you going to fuck now?”
