by Joey Bush
“I regret having to do that,” Alfie said. “Isla knows this. And now you know this. But it had to be done so you’d know that we’re serious about this, and if you want to make things more difficult than they have to be, more bad things will have to happen. I’m hoping that this won’t be the case, though.”
“It won’t,” I said. “Let’s just get this over with so we can get out of here. What do you want?”
“You’re going to call the bank and authorize them to do a wire transfer to my account. Let’s say a million dollars, which I know is pocket change for you.”
“Fine,” I said. “But I’m not doing it until you give me your word that you’re going to Isla go. If you want to keep me here, fine. You have to let her go.”
“Awww.” Alfie made goo-goo eyes at Jasper. “Innit sweet? Look at how he loves her. It’s bloody obvious how much he cares about you, love,” he said, looking at Isla. “Even if the only reason you got involved with him in the first place was to get revenge. Can’t say I really blame you; I know what a tosser this prick can be. Strutting around like he’s got the biggest cock in the place. Did you know that Levi?” he asked. “Right before you got here, Isla told us something I think you might find interesting.” I ignored him, but he continued on. “She told us that she never really liked you to begin with. That this whole thing was about revenge. Interesting, innit?”
“Sure, Alfie,” I said. “Whatever you say. Is that what you’ve been doing this whole time that you’ve been waiting for me? Making up these ridiculous little stories?”
“Oh, we didn’t make it up,” Alfie said. “Why would I make up something like that? No, Isla volunteered this information free and clear. Project Revenge. Because you used to make fun of her. She was overweight. Hard to believe now. She’s got a pretty face anyway; I wouldn’t have made fun of a bird like that for being overweight. But maybe I’m more of a gentleman than you are.”
I wanted to think that he was just saying this to start shit, to try to get me worked up, but I could tell by the way Isla wouldn’t look at me that he was being honest. Besides, how else would he know that she used to be overweight? I tried to keep my face impassive; I didn’t want to let either of them know how much that actually bothered me.
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you that if you can’t say anything nice about someone, you shouldn’t say anything about them at all?” Jasper asked, and then he cackled with laughter, clearly thinking he was some mastermind for coming up with a line like that.
“I didn’t know my mother because she died when I was little,” I said. “So no, she never did tell me that.”
“All right, all right,” Alfie said. “This isn’t some group therapy session. You take care of initiating that wire transfer and then the two of you can be on your way, all right?”
“Yeah, fine.”
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and made the call. It took less than five minutes, and then it was done.
“There,” I said. “All set. Now let her go.”
“We will. But you know, I keep thinking about this Project Revenge.” Alfie smiled. “I like that.” He looked back at me. “We’ll let your girl go. We’ll let you go, too. But not before we give you a little something to remember us by.”
“What?” I said. “Trust me, Alfie, I’ll remember you.”
Jasper stood over by Isla. I felt my muscles tense. If they were going to try anything at all with her, I would beat both of them to bloody fucking pulps.
Alfie pulled a switchblade from his pocket and opened it.
“Wait a second! What are you doing?” Isla said. “He gave you the money; you said you’d let us go. You said that no one was going to get hurt. You gave him your word.”
Alfie nodded. “I did give him my word—that I was going to let you go. I don’t know if I said he wasn’t going to get hurt. But don’t worry, love. This knife cuts like a razor—it won’t hurt that much at all.”
Before either of us had a chance to react, Alfie spun around and slashed the knife down my right side of my face, from just below my eye all the way down to my jawbone. He was right, the motherfucker: It didn’t hurt.
Not at first, at least. Isla screamed, though, and I could feel warm blood spilling down my neck. I brought my fingertips up to my face, felt the way the skin had been split and separated. It was starting to sting; it felt like one long, continuous wasp sting.
“I’m okay,” I said to Isla. “It’s okay.” I glared at Alfie. “What the fuck was that for?”
He snapped the blade shut and slipped it back into his pocket. “My own little Project Revenge, I suppose,” he said, looking inordinately pleased with himself. “You think you can just go around and do whatever the hell it is you want. You think your shit doesn’t stink, you think you can use your money and good looks to get you in and out of anything. Which just isn’t the case all the time. I want you to know that. And not only that, I want you to remember that. That should leave a nice scar that you’ll see every time you look in the mirror. Which I imagine is a lot, for a bloke like yourself.”
“Great,” I said. Talking felt weird. My voice sounded the same, but the right side of my face felt like it was going to split in two. Oh, wait, it already was split in two. “So you’ve disfigured me. Do you feel better about yourself now? Do you feel like this has been your contribution to society? Does your dick feel bigger now?”
I needed to just shut the fuck up, I knew this, but I couldn’t seem to stop the words that were spilling out of my mouth. Yes, Alfie had put his knife away, but it would’ve been easy enough for him to get it back out, and when it really came down to it, how well did I know Alfie? Alfie and I weren’t friends, I realized. Perhaps I’d known it all along, but I’d let myself think that our relationship had evolved past the point of business associates, however dubious that business might have been.
“We’re going to go,” I said. Jasper had loosened the rope around Isla’s wrists enough for her to get free. She stood up and ran over to me. “Are you all right?” I asked.
“I’m fine.” She was looking at me with concern. “I don’t think you are, though.”
“As long as we can get the fuck out of here, I’m completely fine,” I said.
Alfie held his hands up. “You’re free to go, mate. I’m not going to get all crazy on you. I know it might not seem that way, but I really wasn’t looking to spill any blood.”
“No, you’re just totally fine with punching a girl in the face.”
Isla grabbed my arm. “Let’s go,” she said.
We walked out of the room and down the hallway and to the door. I kept waiting to feel the knife blade sinking into my back, but it never happened. Isla’s hand was on the door knob, the door was opening, then we were outside. She pulled me down around the block before stopping to look at me.
“Oh my god,” she said when I moved my hand away. Her eyes were wide. “Your face. You need to get to a hospital.”
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I said. I could tell by the look on her face, though, that it probably looked pretty fuckin gnarly.
“You’re going to need stitches,” she said. “Come on. Let’s go.”
We walked a little way before we saw an unoccupied taxi. She hailed it and it pulled over immediately, though the driver gave us a wary look once we were in.
“Don’t get blood on the upholstery,” he said. “I just had it cleaned.”
“Centre de Salut,” I said. “That’s where we need to go.”
The driver nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s where I was going to take you, regardless of where you said you wanted to go.” He looked in the rearview mirror at Isla. “And you, miss. What happened to your face? Did the two of you get into some sort of fight?”
“No,” Isla said. “He didn’t do this to me.”
The driver raised his eyebrows skeptically. “Well that is good,” he said. “Though if he did, I’d say you were the winner of the fight.”
Isla sho
ok her head. “We weren’t fighting.”
It probably didn’t look too good, though; Isla with her bloody nose, me with the slice down my face. When we got to the hospital, I paid the cab driver and we went into the emergency room, where we were given a clipboard and some forms and told to have a seat in the waiting room. The waiting room wasn’t full, but there was definitely an assortment of characters there. I avoided the looks people were giving us. I wasn’t the worst of the lot, but no one else was sitting there with their face sliced halfway open. I gingerly brought my hand down from where it had been pressing the side of my face. My whole face felt both warm and numb, and the blood on my hand was dried and starting to cake.
“Um . . . let me fill that out for you,” Isla said, taking the clipboard and pen. “Actually, hold on.”
She got up and went over to talk to the woman behind the desk. When she returned, she had a few damp wash rags. “Here,” she said, handing them to me. “Clean your hands off with that one, and hold this one up to your face.” She looked at me closely. “The bleeding isn’t nearly as bad now, at least.”
“Thanks,” I said as I tried to wipe the blood off my hand. It had all happened so fast, though I could see Alfie’s face in my mind, the satisfied expression. Christ, he must’ve wanted to do that for a long time.
“How long do you think we’re going to have to wait?” Isla asked.
“I don’t know.” I didn’t mind waiting, though. Now that we were out of there, I felt a little more at ease.
“Does it hurt?”
“It’s not so bad. It was stinging like a motherfucker for a while, but now it’s more numb than anything else. Talking feels a little strange.”
She winced. “I bet.”
“Listen,” I said. “I’m really sorry about all of this. About everything. I wish you hadn’t gotten involved in any of it. I never would’ve been able to forgive myself if he had done something to you.”
“I don’t think he would have. I mean, yeah, it was scary and kind of fucked up, but I didn’t get the feeling like he would’ve killed me or anything. Maybe that was naïve, I don’t know. I’ve never been in that sort of situation before.”
I started to smile but then stopped when it felt like the skin on my face was going split even further. “I would hope not.”
“No. This is definitely the first time I’ve ever been taken hostage and woke up to find myself tied to a chair.”
“Woke up?”
“He did something . . . I came out of the bathroom and he came up behind me and put this rag over my face, with whatever that shit is they use to knock people out with.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Isla, I am so fucking sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“And . . . I’m also sorry about you having to see that whole thing with Ella.”
She stiffened. “Oh, you mean me walking in on the two of you kissing?”
“Yes. She just showed up. I wasn’t expecting her to be there, and I certainly wasn’t expecting her to kiss me. That is the truth.”
“It looked to me like the two of you were both enjoying it quite a bit.”
“I did kiss her back,” I said. I could’ve denied it, but I wanted to be honest. “I did, but more like a goodbye, I guess. Which might sound corny, or maybe sounds like a flat out lie, but that’s all it was. I didn’t initiate it, and I wasn’t kissing her back because I wanted it to go any further. If you had only shown up a few minutes earlier, you would’ve heard me telling her that I was with you, and whatever had previously gone on between her and me was going to have to stop. She didn’t take it well.”
Isla stopped writing on the clipboard. “You really told her that?”
“I really did. And it didn’t go over well. At all. I thought that she’d be cool about it, but she was going on and on about how we were soulmates and that hooking up with other people wasn’t supposed to mean anything because we always ended up coming back to each other. I know you might not want to hear all these details, but the reason I’m telling you is so you know that I mean it when I say I want to be with you. I really do. It would’ve been easy as hell to just go along with what Ella was saying, if I didn’t feel so strongly about you.”
“Thank you for telling me all that,” Isla said, putting the pen down and balancing the clipboard on her lap. “It definitely wasn’t what I was expecting to walk in on. But I believe you. Part of me is having a hard time believing that you’d want to be with me over someone like Ella, but I’ll believe you because you’re telling me.”
“I do,” I said.
“Then I should say I’m sorry, too. Because that stuff Alfie was saying back there, about Project Revenge and everything . . . that was true as well. In the beginning, anyway. I obviously don’t feel like that anymore. I wasn’t expecting to feel like this about you at all.”
“So the real reason we started hanging out again was because you wanted to get back at me?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“But . . . I thought you said none of that bothered you.”
“It did,” she said. “It did a lot, actually, although maybe there were some times when I was just being overly sensitive. You could be so nice to me when it was just the two of us, but then it seemed like whenever your friends were around, you were always making fun of me. Of course I tried to act like it didn’t bother me, but it did.”
I took her hand, feeling a deep shame rise up in me. I could not remember exactly the thoughts that were going on in teenager Levi’s head when I’d said those things to Isla, but it had been something along the lines of wanting to have a laugh, thinking she wouldn’t mind because she’d be part of the group, too, even if her inclusion was because I was making fun of her. Alfie was right: I did used to think that I could just do whatever it was I wanted, say whatever I wanted, and not have to deal with any of the consequences. I wanted to think that if I had known how bothered Isla was by the whole thing that I would have stopped, but I couldn’t be certain that I would have. Back then, anyway. I was different now.
“I deserve it,” I said. “I totally and completely deserve it if you decide to up and leave. Right now, even. I wouldn’t blame you.”
“I’m not going to do that.” She squeezed my hand. “Now that we’re together, there’s no one else I would rather be with.”
Just hearing that made me feel better, made it feel like going through this thing with Alfie was worth it, even. After Isla finished filling out the paperwork, she turned it in and then we sat there for a while, though not as long as I had thought we would. A nurse called my name and led us into an exam area, pulling the curtain around us.
“So what happened here?” she asked. She looked vaguely familiar, someone that I had probably seen around at the clubs. She looked at the clipboard. “Levi Bassett,” she said. “I know you.”
“You look familiar.”
“Maria,” she said. “You probably don’t recognize me in this uniform.” She leaned toward me a little. “I was at Creamfields, with a bunch of my girlfriends, and you helped us out?” she said in a low voice.
I could see Isla out of the corner of my eye, looking more and more uncomfortable with each word that Maria said.
“Oh, right,” I said. “I remember.” I’d had a couple extra Lush on me and had given them to Maria and her friends.
Maria was snapping on a pair of blue latex gloves. “So what happened to you?” she repeated. She looked at Isla. “Did you want me to check out your nose, too?”
“I think it’ll be okay,” Isla said. “We just . . . I ran into Levi and I had . . . I had a new box cutter in my hand. I’m not sure how it even happened, but my nose ended up getting smashed and his face got sliced.”
“Mmm,” Maria said. I could tell she didn’t believe a word of it, but if I wasn’t going to say anything to dispute the story, then she’d let it go. She came over to where I was sitting on the edge of the hospital bed and gently examined the side of my face.
“Y
ou’re lucky,” she said after a minute. “This is a deep cut, but it’s very clean. You’ll need stitches, but I’d say the chances are good that this will heal with almost no noticeable scar.”
I raised my eyebrows and looked at Isla. “Think we should call Alfie and tell him the good news?”
“Uh, no, definitely not,” she said.
“Let me go get what I need and we’ll clean you up and get this stitched up,” Maria said.
I looked at Isla. “I had just given her some . . . party favors,” I said. “That’s what that was all about. We never . . . were together or anything like that.”
“You know what?” she said. “It’s all in the past anyway. If you did, it doesn’t bother me. I don’t want to be that kind of girlfriend, who’s going to be upset by things that happened in your past.”
Maria came back in with the supplies she needed, including a hooked needle that I didn’t want to imagine going into my face. I let my eyes close while she cleaned the cut, which brought on a whole new round of stinging sensation, followed by a sharp poke when she gave me some local anesthetic. After that: totally numb. Ahh. Still, I kept my eyes shut as she did the stitches, because though I couldn’t feel the pain, I could feel the movements, the light tugging on my skin, and it was honestly making me a little queasy. I wasn’t going to hurl though; no, I wouldn’t give Alfie that satisfaction, even if there’d be no way of him knowing I’d done so.
When Maria was finished, a doctor came in to sign off the discharge papers and give me a prescription for some painkillers.
“Thanks,” I said to Maria, once I was given the okay to leave. “Appreciate the good work you did.”
“No problem,” she said. “Just keep that bandage over them for the next twenty-four hours or so, and then you can take it off. If you get them wet while taking a shower, just make sure to dry them the best you can, okay? They’re dissolvable stitches, so you don’t have to worry about coming back in to get them out. And be gentle with yourself.” She looked at Isla. “Both of you, okay?”
