Dirty Talk

by Lauren Landish

  Brad laughs. “Flattery ain’t gonna get you a discount. I know how much money you have. Ivy Jo here is getting full service, and you’re gonna just have to pay for full service.”

  “Full service?” Ivy Jo asks, grinning. “I don’t see no hunky muscular men around here, so unless you’ve switched teams, you can’t give me full service!”

  Brad gives her a hug, careful as the old woman’s got a cane. “Here, let me introduce you. And Mindy, I’ll give you a call when she’s ready to be picked up.”

  Mindy gives Brad a grateful nod and a smile to me as she gives her grandmother a kiss on the cheek. “Be good, Grandma.”

  “Hey, now, I’m always good,” she says. “It’s—”

  “When she’s bad, you gotta worry,” I finish for her, causing Ivy Jo to turn and give me an amused look and a smile. “Hi, I’m McKayla. I’ll be doing your hair today.”

  She grins, pointing a finger at my hair. “You going to make me look like that?”

  I pat my hair, which I’ve slicked down from my normal big curls into something chic and sleek. “Sorry, this sort of fabulousness is reserved for me only. But I can make you the hottest thing at your next family reunion.”

  “Considering my family, that’s quite a tall order, but I’ll take you up on that challenge,” Ivy Jo says. “But no crazy colors. People already give me dirty looks when I start talking with the great grandbabies like I’m going to ruin then. I just want to hug and cuddle them. What’s so wrong with that?”

  “Not a damn thing,” I reply. “Come on, let’s get you settled into a chair and you can tell me all about your visit.”

  Ivy Jo settles in, adjusting herself for a few moments, and soon, we get her leaning back, shampoo worked into her hair.

  “So tell me about you, Pinky,” Ivy Jo says. “You been around town long?”

  “Just a little while,” I admit. “Moved here because I wanted to get out of the Hollywood game. It’s a good place.”

  “That it is,” Ivy Jo agrees. “Now, if I weren’t living in a good old folks’ complex near my other granddaughter, I’d be settling around here myself. So you get settled in, got yourself a man yet?”

  “Whoa, slow down, Ivy Jo,” Brad says. I glance up at him and he gives me a roll of his eyes. “This one . . . she’ll get the claws out in a minute, know what I mean?”

  I’m not sure if Brad’s speaking to me or to Ivy Jo, but I’m sort of glad he’s interjecting. Ivy Jo, of course, thinks he’s talking to her. “Damn, boy, you get cattier than my granddaughters!”

  Brad gives a remarkable imitation of a cat yowling before hissing twice and scratching at the air. “Yeah, well, just for that, I’m going to eat all the chocolate scones Mindy brought. As long as nobody tells my trainer.”

  “Boy, please, you know my Mindy makes the best in town!” she says. “But go ahead, let us girls do our thing. You know a grandma always wants to feed her kids, so go eat your scone and mine too.”

  “You’re so good to me, Ivy Jo,” Brad replies as he walks up front and plops down at the desk, digging into the box.

  Once she sees Brad occupied, she looks up, grinning. “So? Entertain an old lady on her deathbed. Besides, I’ve been around the block a time or two. Maybe I can even teach you this trick I do with my tongue?”

  I can’t help it. My fingers are covered in suds, and I start laughing so hard I cover my mouth, inhaling a bunch of bubbles until I cough, having to walk away for a moment. “No . . . I think I’m good there.”

  “Well, you see, what you do is . . .” Ivy Jo threatens, and I laugh hard, holding my hand up.

  “Okay, okay! Fine, I’ll spill it. It’s, well, I’ve got my eye on a guy named Evan.”

  “Accountant?” Ivy Jo asks sarcastically as I get back to washing. “You strike me as the accountant type.”

  “Yeah, right. More like mechanic who’s a growly, grumpy asshole who just turns me on like no other, especially when he actually does and says nice things . . . but only for me.”

  “Sounds like my husband,” Ivy Jo says wistfully. “When I first had my eye on him, he was that man in town nobody wanted to look wrong at, else he might just be tempted to rearrange that look. But I got past that. Why’s he that way?”

  “He’s former service, had some bad times,” I explain as best I can. “I don’t know all of it, but he thinks he’s damaged and by putting up this mean fuck off façade, he won’t hurt anyone.”

  “Mmm, I know the type. My generation don’t like talking about it, but my husband served in Korea. When he came back, he wasn’t the same man. Oh, he was still a good man, but I could see it in his eyes. It made him kinder though. I think he was lucky in that he saw that life was precious so he was more open to me. Not all men are so lucky though.”

  “Yeah,” I whisper, getting the spray nozzle to start rinsing her hair. “Evan’s hot and cold, pulls me in and then pushes me away. I’m not the type that gives up easily though.”

  Ivy Jo grins, nodding. “Good on you. So what about the sex? I’m guessing it’s off the charts good?”

  Damn, I like this woman. “Best ever. He’s aggressive in a good way but can be soft and teasing too. We’ve been all over the place . . . parking lots, his garage, the salon.”

  Brad, who’s on his second scone already, looks up and interrupts. “Oh, hell no, bitch, you didn’t just say the salon? Oh em gee, please tell me you disinfected whatever it was you got your groove on? In fact, never mind, I’m nope-ing the fuck outta here, burning the place down, and we’ll start over with the insurance money. Just tell me this, can I sit in my chair? The lobby?”

  I smirk, giving Ivy Jo a wink, and purse my lips, zipping them shut as Brad throws his hands up and picks up a third scone. It’s mine, but at this point, I think it’s safer to just let him have it.

  I turn my attention back to Ivy Jo, who’s chuckling. “So yeah, the sex is definitely off the charts good.”

  She laughs as I sit her up. “Whoo-whee, girl, you are gone for this man. He likes you too, I can tell by what you said. Ain’t no man gonna pull you back after pushing you away unless he’s got something invested.”

  “Yeah well, not sure it matters. I’ve basically thrown myself at him, and he’s caught me, but then he retreats back to his corner and shuts me out again with a wall around him. I’m trying to make him see he doesn’t need to worry about breaking me, but damn if he’s not stubborn.”

  “Don’t you worry, just keep tapping that wall,” Ivy Jo says. “It won’t come down all at once, but the cracks will spread like spider webs, little weak spots all over until . . . boom, it comes crumbling down. Ooh, that reminds me, that’s an old Mellencamp tune. Lord, that man was hot back in his day, but then again, so was I. Anyway, when that wall falls, he’s gonna be scared to death, so you’d better be right there for him. But listen and listen close. You deserve to be loved right. I don’t mean sex, I mean in your soul. You need to be loved right, and he does too. Maybe you’re willing, ready, and able to love him right, and do it now. But if he isn’t ready, if he isn’t capable of doing right by you, don’t you wait around too long for him to get it straight. Every day is precious and you don’t want to spend it waiting around for him to figure out that you’re a damn good thing.”

  I don’t really know what to say, so I sort of agree and change the subject. “You’re right, and I just hope it works out. So tell me about your great-grandbabies.”

  Ivy Jo grins and gets the point, and as I finish with her hair, she goes on and on about her family. The cut and color is just like she asked, and while the old lady curl set isn’t something I’ve done in years, it’s just like a bicycle. You don’t forget how.

  “Okay, Ivy Jo, just a minute now.” I turn her to the mirror and she shrieks in horror.

  “Oh my gosh, child! You made me look like a damned drowned poodle!” She fluffs her hair with light fingers, her eyes horrified. “Someone call my damned lawyer!”

  I’m shocked. Maybe the curl set wasn�
�t as easy as I thought. “I’m really—”

  She catches my eye with a smirk, almost giggling. “Gotcha!” A huge wave of relief sweeps over me, and she cackles while leaning back, wiping at her eyes. “Oh, that was fun. You should’ve seen your face. An old lady’s got to get her laughs in where she can, and that was too easy to not take advantage. ”

  I sigh and laugh along. It feels good, this woman’s crazy energy infusing me with some needed lightness in the midst of my swirling drama. “Good point. Okay, let’s get you turned over to Brad.”

  She moves over to Brad’s chair, and I think for a minute about asking her advice about the car drama and the camera guy.

  But before I start, I realize she’s talking to Brad about the cute trainer down at his gym and whether he should ask him out or not. I decide that maybe it’s his turn for a little Grandma wisdom and let it go, just enjoying the moment.

  I turn to look out the window, seeing the big bay doors open at the garage. There are legs sticking out from under a car, but even from here, I can tell it’s TJ and not Evan. I sigh, hoping that Grandma is right and it’s just a matter of sticking it out until Evan’s walls crumble down.

  Chapter 22

  Evan

  I watch McKayla look across the street as she carries in a load of groceries, and I can read her look as our eyes briefly meet as I finish off a cup of coffee outside.

  I don’t know how I’m going to get through to her. I’ve tried everything I can to push her away, and it didn’t work. I’ve thought about what Earl said, and even though I know he’s right, I’m not sure I can be what McKayla needs.

  She needs a safer kind of bad boy. The sort of guy who’ll be happy to go rolling on a Harley with her or go skydiving or any other crazy damned thing she has pop into her head, but who isn’t a ticking time bomb. She needs someone who can still be a rock, a foundation she can build her life upon.

  There’s a part of me that would like to be, but I know I’m not. Not now, and maybe not ever. But she isn’t getting it. Instead, she’s looking at me with that same mix of half exasperation, half confidence that tells me she still has her sights set on me and is only frustrated I haven’t accepted that yet.

  I at least owe her an apology, that I know for sure. But how do I apologize basically for my entire personality—my asshole tendencies, the way the darkness just spews forth sometimes beyond my control, and that I’m not even sure I can be some dinner date nice guy who treats her like the Princess I always call her.

  I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since it all went down. I’ve told TJ about the stalker, leaving out the sex beforehand, and that Earl and I are keeping a watch on McKayla, but he doesn’t understand. To TJ, ‘keeping an eye out’ means glancing over and not going out of your way, because bad shit just doesn’t happen to good people in his world.

  I know differently. I know that the only reason good people are able to sleep safely at night is because there are bad people like me who are willing to do bad shit to the other bad guys. So that means, in my case, I’ve taken the night shift so my last few nights have been spent in the pitch black, peering through the blinds, a set of binoculars at my side as my mind whirls and replays every moment with McKayla and the quick seconds with the stalker. Hopefully, the sneaky fucker I’m hunting shows his face soon. I want this to be over with.

  With nights spent frozen in waiting, I’ve had to bail on TJ a bit during the day, grabbing naps while Earl has found daily reasons to come walking by the street, chatting up folks as he always does. To someone who didn’t know better, you’d think he was just being his Nosy Nancy old self while maybe getting a little extra exercise, but I know he’s patrolling and I appreciate his diligence.

  TJ’s at least been cool about letting me head up for a few hours of shuteye in the late afternoon after we get most of the work done. At least, he’s been cool about it until today.

  “You watch her again last night?”

  I pause at the door to the stairs and look at him with a raised eyebrow. “Of course. We haven’t caught the fucker yet.”

  TJ shakes his head, looking around the shop at the three jobs we’ve got stacked up right now. Fast Eddie cracked a steering rod at the track, the Pedersens have their minivan in for an oil flush and tune-up, and Earl himself brought in his old truck for a balance job on the rear axle. “Listen . . . have you talked to her? Maybe she knows something new or talked to the cops.”

  I’m silent. I don’t know how to tell him that after getting her up to her apartment and the two of us calmed down, I’d just held her for the few hours ‘till the sun rose. We’d started talking about who it could’ve been, what it might mean, and about how it was likely related to the incident with her car.

  I was ready to kick some ass and take some names. I had my immediate gut suspicions, including our all too friendly city councilman . . . but McKayla kept minimizing it. Maybe it was punk kids messing with her car, maybe the guy was taking pictures of the moon, just some big misunderstanding. Hopefully, that’s all it is, but my gut says that ain’t it.

  I wanted to give her something else to focus on, a distraction from the seriousness I suspected was coming, so I had shifted the conversation to talking about her.

  We chuckled through her stories about working in LA on a scandalous TV show, how Brad has a sort of second-level connection to some pretty famous people in town, and how she and Brad had decided to become their own bosses in a new place.

  It gave me a new understanding for just how big of a life upheaval they made together and made me appreciate that she has such a good friend in him.

  He’s more than just his prancing prissy act, though, and I respect that. He’s a risk-taker, living life on his own terms, anyone else be damned, and I fucking love that about McKayla too.

  I wish I were that gutsy. But I’m not.

  “Tell me about what scarred you,” McKayla says, leaning against me and nestling her head against my chest. “Because it must have been a lot to get past that basic bedrock of decency that I sense in you.”

  I consider telling her to fuck off, that she hasn’t got the right to ask about what’s fucked me up, but instead, I take a deep breath and start to answer her. “There was a lot . . . but the final straw was my second tour, this time to Afghanistan.”

  I close my eyes, and in my head, I can smell the odor of the camp. “Our base camp was in some backwater village. I could barely mumble the damn name. The Taliban had been getting up to their typical bullshit in the area, so the brigade commander thought it’d be a good place to send my company. We had to go in the old-fashioned way, humping our damn rucks and most of our supplies carried in by the three armored Humvees that were also supposedly our ‘heavy weapons platforms’.

  That village, it was so poor that most of the people heated their houses by burning the dung of their goats. They cooked their breakfasts over fires of burning goat shit. I’ve never smelled anything so bad in all my life, and by the third day, I barely noticed it. It was sunk in everywhere.

  Things were quiet for a while. The Taliban were keeping their heads down, but we knew what they were doing. They’ve been doing the same trick for fifteen years, and before us, the older guys were playing the same fucking game with the Soviets. New unit comes into town full of piss and vinegar, lay low. Let us get worn down by the grind, by the homesickness and the bad rations and the once-a-week showers. Let us get worn down by seeing the starving kids who bugged us constantly for something from our MREs. We couldn’t give them a thing, though, because we knew if we gave one morsel to a kid, we’d have twenty more on our asses like ants to honey, and soon enough, some adult would get their ass in a twist saying we’d given them unclean food.

  So the Taliban waited, and even if we didn’t mean to, we started to relax. We let things slip, let things go slack . . . and that’s when they hit us.

  I’d been tasked with four other guys to take two of the Hummers to Battalion Headquarters on a supply run. Mail, more rati
ons, ammo even though we’d hardly used any, shit like that.

  I was in the back of the lead Hummer when they hit. I got lucky, I guess. The rear Hummer was hit by a Taliban RPG full on, taking out the gas tank and turning our mail and most of our ammo into a ball of fire. But whoever was supposed to shoot at us was a little off. He hit near the right front tire. Perkins, the driver, jerked the wheel and got us off the road, where I jumped to save my ass . . .”

  I pause, and I open my eyes to feel McKayla stroking my face. “Evan, it’s okay.”

  I shake my head, kissing the tips of her fingers. “They went over the side. We were halfway up a mountain and there was no real guardrail. Some nights, I can still hear Perkins scream when he realized what he’d done. I turned my attention to the other Hummer, spraying up the hill toward where I guessed the attackers were. I had two hundred rounds and I used them. But there wasn’t much I could do. The other guys never had a chance. I tried, Princess . . . I tried so hard.”

  “What happened?”

  “I had a radio,” I rasp, thinking back. “And I was lucky. The Air Force had a couple of birds in the area. They dropped napalm and tore up the mountainside with those big fucking guns of theirs in a couple of passes. They sent in an evac for me, and somehow, I got a cut on my cheek that needed three stitches. So I’ve got a Combat Infantry Badge, one barely deserved Purple Heart, and the rest of them . . . their families got a flag and a letter signed by the President. That’s it. But at nights, I can still see them.”

  I expected her to pity me. I’ve seen those looks before, but like she always does, she surprised me.

  Instead, McKayla stroked my face again before hugging me even as I stayed stiff in her arms, running her fingers through my hair. “You served well,” she said quietly. “Those ghosts, they’ll be with you, but they aren’t mad at you for surviving. They want you to live, Evan. To live well, to honor them by living well.”