by Naomi West
When it passes, I collapse onto the bed, able to bounce up and down for a couple of minutes before Spike is leaning over, hands in my hair, face pressed against my cheek, spending his own pleasure inside of me.
We roll aside as we have dozens of times before. After lying there for a minute or so, both of us panting heavily as his come pools between my thighs, I climb into his arms and we lie there, limbs entwined, listening to each other breathe.
He’s tired from the violence, so he falls asleep quickly, snoring lightly, wheezing through his nose. But I don’t fall asleep. Even if the pleasure was immense—and it always is immense—it doesn’t change my mind about what I need to do. Dad needs to be ended, and I need to decide who and what I want to be. I’m not going to be the passenger anymore. I’m going to be the driver.
I creep out of bed quietly, wincing at every creak, and then get dressed quickly in sweatpants and a sweater. When I pull on my sneakers, I watch Spike for any sign of waking up. I think he’d wake up if he was upstairs, sleeping in the clubhouse, but down here, with me, maybe he feels comfortable. Maybe he feels safe. That makes me feel rotten for leaving him like this. But if the alternative is to sit idly by while everybody else does the work for me, leaving is my only option.
And yet as I creep out of the bedroom door up the stairs—the door is unlocked and Spike has stopped placing guards, perhaps because he sees it as a waste of manpower—a familiar feeling of indecision hits me. Is this really the right thing, or am I making a terrible mistake?
Chapter Sixteen
Yazmin
The clubhouse is quiet except for a few noises coming from the bar, men clearing their throats, glasses clinking, chairs scraping. I creep out of the front door, head low, and walk down the road. I’m halfway down the road when I realize I’m heading toward Sunnyside and not the Scorpions’ clubhouse. The familiar indecision is chasing me this way, I think, the feeling which has been with me my whole life, never knowing what to do or who to be. The night is dark, the sky black with clouds, a few stars peeking out here and there. I walk under the shadow of the trees, invisible in the darkness, my heart pounding with the kind of anxiety you can only feel after being trapped mostly indoors for months.
Outside is big, so open. To my left are the woods, thick tangles of shadowed leaves and trees and vines. To my right is the road, and beyond that more woods. The road, as I’m walking on it right now, has no beginning and no end. My legs ache nicely with the feeling of walking. The running machine makes my legs ache, too, but this is a different type of ache, an outdoor ache, an ache that only comes with actually getting somewhere. I think of Spike back in the basement room, sleeping peacefully. I wonder if he’ll hate me for this. He might. He might wake up and decide that I’m just another bitch, as some bikers like to say, just another bitch who abandoned him. Or maybe he’ll wake up determined to get me back. I hope not. I hope he has the good sense to wait for me to get some information.
But if I’m really going for information I should turn around and head to the Scorpions’ clubhouse. Even if I know this to be true, my legs continue to carry me toward town. A few cars drive down the winding road, but I’m deep in the darkness, hidden even from their headlights.
After walking for an indeterminate amount of time—it’s difficult to tell in the deep night—the town of Sunnyside rises out of the darkness. It’s a small town, home to around two-thousand people, set in a small valley. The church is by far the tallest building, a spire which reaches toward the heavens. Spike, I think. Spike. The town hall is the second largest, a colonial-style building with pillars and a big wide entrance. The superstore, a monstrous building which watches over all the others like a suspicious older brother, is the largest by far. Otherwise the buildings are red-bricked and two-story, most of them huddling around Main Street, others, like the school, dotted on the outer rim. I cross over onto the pedestrian path which leads down the small grassy hill to the town entrance, a wooden archway with carved words reading Welcome to Sunnyside, Where Smiles Are Free!
There are few lights on, I see as I approach the town. The town hall clock tells me that it’s almost midnight. My throat is dry and my legs ache. I walk past a diner which is still open, an old lady wearing a white apron wiping down the tables, her hair bunched up in a net, singing silently under her breath. I want to go in there and get a coffee, sit for a while and try to ponder this situation out. But I have no money. I walk on.
I go to the town hall and sit under the eaves, knees huddled to my chin, feeling like a kid again. I would often do things like this as a kid, just wander off and sit somewhere, thinking and trying not to think. I had lots of time because Mom was always working doubles and triples. Mom. The bed of blood . . . I try not to cry but the tears come anyway, sliding down my cheeks, into my mouth, salty and bitter. I cough them away when the five-dollar bill flutters in the wind into my line of sight, hovering for a split second before gusting away.
I’m on my feet, chasing it.
I really do feel like a kid now as I dart down the street, eyes locked on the five-dollar bill. I duck into the park where the five-dollar bill is whisked beneath the swing set. As I pick it up, I wonder if I might just be a little bit mad. Then I turn back and head toward the diner. The old lady smiles kindly at me when the bell above the door rings. Apart from me and her, the place is empty.
“Hello, dearie,” she says. “What can I get for you?”
I look at the price board. “Just a coffee, please.”
I sit down in the corner, away from the street windows, nursing my coffee. I keep trying to work out what I’m going to do with myself, with my life. I want to strike out on my own, prove to myself and to the world that I can make it by myself, prove to everybody that I don’t have to be the person constantly leaning on others. But at the same time I know that I’m falling for Spike. Maybe ‘falling for’ is the wrong way to think about it. Maybe ‘I’ve already fallen for Spike’ is more accurate.
I try and picture my life without him, try and see myself alone with our child, or living separately but still seeing him from time to time, and my chest aches with longing. I want to strike out on my own, and I want to be with Spike. I want to defy Spike and return to Dad, and I want to listen to him and stay with him. I want to kill Dad, take my revenge, and I want to run. I want, I want, I want . . . but the more I go around and around my head, the clearer it becomes that I want several different things, most of which contradict each other.
Nobody ever said the human mind was simple.
I drink down half of my coffee in one gulp, realizing I’ve let it cool. The caffeine whirs around my body, waking me up. I drink the second half and then gesture over to the old lady, who’s sitting behind the counter reading a paperback. She tucks the paperback into her apron when she comes over. When she’s close, I see that it’s the same one I’ve been reading, the one about Nicholas Appleyard and Nancy Smithson.
“How’re you finding it?” I ask her, gesturing at the book.
Her face lights up, years shedding like a snake’s skin. “Oh, it’s just brilliant! Have you read it?”
“I’m reading it.” I nod. “What part are you at?”
“Oh, well . . .” She leans in as though we are conspirators. “He’s just found out that she’s pregnant, you see, and it’s causing a ruckus because, well, you know, it was a different time.”
“Yeah.” I nod again. “Yeah, it was. I bet Nancy’s going to get the brunt of it, too. I bet she’ll be called whore, or maybe it’d be harlot. And all the men will sit around talking about what needs to be done with her, and Nancy will end up old and alone with nobody who cares about her because men decided it needed to be that way—” I catch myself, cutting the rant short. “Sorry. Another coffee, please.”
She looks at me like she’s not sure if I need another coffee, and then pours it anyway. I lay my head in my hands, reasoning with myself. I want to be with Spike; I want to fall in love with him, or fall even more in love with h
im; but I also want to feel like I have a measure of independence. Well, surely those two desires aren’t mutually exclusive. Surely it would be possible to make something of myself while also having a family with Spike. And, really, if I just up and left Spike, fled California and went east, maybe, surely, I would be doing to my child exactly what Mom and Dad did to me, leaving him or her without a father, leaving him or her to always wonder if they were ever truly loved.
Okay, so I want to be with Spike. But that doesn’t solve the problem of Dad.
I finish the coffee and leave the diner, heading toward the superstore without thinking about it. Dad is a problem I can’t ignore. The idea of bringing life into a world in which Dad is still around, still causing pain, still creating beds of blood, is too much for me to handle. Dad is a wild dog who needs to be put down. Dad is a rabid dog who’s causing too many problems. Dad is a waste of skin, and I hate him.
“I hate him,” I whisper, clenching my fist.
The superstore is open twenty-four hours. I walk around the bright-lit aisles, ending up at the baby clothes section. The newborn clothes are unbelievably small, not much bigger than my hand. I lay one hand on my belly and hold the clothes to the light with the other. It’s difficult to believe that a life, a real heart-thumping life, is going to fit inside these tiny clothes. A swelling of maternal instinct rises in my breast, a strong desire to keep this child safe, to make sure the world this child lives in is a world without snakes.
In the parking lot, I use the last of my change on the payphone, dialing the Scorpions’ compound number.
It’s Dad who answers.
“What?” he barks.
“It’s me, Daddy,” I say, twisting my voice so that I sound like a scared daughter. “I need your help. I’m in Sunnyside, at the superstore.”
“So you come crawling back,” he says. “Women. You’re weak, just like your mother. Wait there.”
Chapter Seventeen
Spike
I bury my face in Yazmin’s hair, drawing in the scent of her. I know am I still asleep, or at least in that half-sleep state that feels like sleep. Vaguely, I see myself flying over Sunnyside, the type of dream I haven’t had since I was a kid and I was flying over the world, before Mom and Dad and Toby. I wrap my arms around her and bring her closer to me. She smells like shampoo and soap; she smells like lust; she smells like sex; and she feels like . . . she feels like a pillow. And as I rise out of sleep, I realize the smell is more like clean sheets than clean hair. The sweat is clinging to the pillow. I would laugh if I wasn’t panicking like mad. I’m hugging a fucking pillow.
I sit up, looking around the room, wondering if she’s in the bathroom. I charge in there, kicking the door almost off its hinges, but it’s empty. I run around the basement room, checking absurd places like behind the fridge. For a few sleepy minutes it’s like we’re playing a game of hide and seek. That’s what it feels like to me, anyway. But then the hard truth hits home. She’s gone. She’s left me. She’s left me to go to the Scorpions’ compound. I sit down on the chair, belly twisting in anxiety. She could be dead right now. She could be strung up in the clubhouse. She could be being tortured by the weasel-looking freak.
I feel sick. I try and laugh it off. I’m not some lovestruck man who’s about to puke because his woman has gone AWOL. I think about all the times in the army when shit went dark, all the bloody shit I witnessed. Images of torn limbs and bloody fatigues come into my mind. But it doesn’t matter. I feel sick and there’s nothing to do but run into the toilet and kneel at the bowl. In the end, I’m not sick. I manage to swallow it down. But the shock of it hits me hard. I care about Yazmin so damn much that it almost made me sick.
As I stand up, getting a grip of myself, I wonder if I love her. It has never occurred to me to wonder this before. I never dreamed that a man like me could fall in love. But what other word is there for this feeling? It’s like a piece of me has been wrenched away. I go into the basement and pull on my pants, and then go up into the clubhouse. I don’t want to tell the men that Yazmin’s gone, not yet, not if I can help it. After Danny and last night, they’re all freaking out as it is. The Scorpions are raiding us over and over and our one bargaining chip—that’s how they see her, I can’t deny that—has just fled the clubhouse.
But my choice is robbed of me when I run into Justin, crossing from the dormitory wing to the bar. “Something wrong?” he asks, tilting his head at me. I guess I must look pretty frantic for my VP to look at me like that.
“You got a cigarette?”
“Sure.”
Together we go outside. I lead him around the clubhouse, away from the main entrance, standing shirtless in the morning sun. I rarely smoke to relieve stress. In the army, men used to do that all the time, smoke ten cigarettes after a firefight to get over the shock of almost dying. But in civilian life—or outlaw life, depending on how you look at it—I usually smoke only for pleasure. But now, as I inhale the smoke, sucking it into my lungs, I know I’m smoking because I’m scared shitless. My woman, my kid . . . dammit, my woman, my kid!
“She’s gone, hasn’t she?” Justin says.
“How did you know?” I snap, way too intense. I need to calm down. I flick away the cigarette stub and take another, lighting it with a match against my thumb.
“I didn’t know.” He sounds defensive. Something has been off with him for a while, I reflect. Defensive, shifty. Or maybe that’s just my mood. “You just seem . . . you’re not wearing a shirt, boss.”
I look down at my bare torso. “All right, then. Yeah, she’s gone missing. She ran out on me and she might be at the Scorpions’ clubhouse. She had this mad plan . . .” I tell him about her plan to get more information for us to use.
Justin’s face tightens. “That doesn’t seem like a very good plan,” he says. “What if Snake knows she’s been with us?”
“Exactly!” I blurt. “That’s my goddamn point. I told her, man. I fucking told her.”
“So what’s the plan?” Justin asks.
“We need to raid the clubhouse, like Knuckles suggested. And we need to do it soon. Tonight. We’re going to go in there and we’re going to kill every goddamn one of them. We’re going to string Snake up like the fucking weasel he is. But if he’s laid a single finger on Yazmin, we’re going to make him eat his fingers first.”
Justin is backing away from me, looking scared shitless.
“Get the men,” I say. “I’m gonna get my leathers, and then we’re gonna have an officers’ meeting.”
“Boss.” Justin lingers, moistening his lips with his tongue. “I . . . uh . . . do you really think a raid is a good idea? Don’t you think enough of our men have died already?”
“We’re raiding,” I say. “And as my VP I reckon you ought to be focused on how to get it done, not second-guessing me every damn step of the way. What’s gotten into you, Justin? These past few months—hell, this past year, even—you’ve been second-guessing every decision I make.”
“I don’t know if that’s fair, Spike,” Justin says quietly. “I just . . .” That strange look flits across his face. He sighs. “I just want what’s best for the club.”
He leaves before I can say anything else.
I go into the bar, heading for my office, my mind full of dark thoughts. I keep thinking of the smoldering husk the car became by the time the fire truck and the ambulance arrived. I keep thinking about the charred bodies they were pulling out, only now it’s not Toby or Mom or Dad I see. It’s Yazmin, burned to a crisp, staring up at me with hollow eyes and silently asking me why I didn’t save her. A pit opens in my belly. I reckon the world is a twisted place when you can be sore from sex with a woman and not know if she’s gonna live or die at the same time.
I’m at my office door when Georgia Castle, the cleaner, approaches me. “I’ve heard the news,” she whispers. She’s been with us a long time. She’s a hard, strong woman, the sort of woman who doesn’t take shit from any of the guys. “Yazmin has gone.
”
“I know. Do you think I forgot that on my way in here—” I catch myself, clenching my jaw. I need to calm down. A president shouldn’t act like this, even if his world is crumbling apart. “Sorry. I know you two were—are—friends.”
“I know it’s silly,” she says. “But I think she might be my best friend. We have such a nice time talking together, you know. I think given the proper time, we could get, uh, really close.” She fidgets awkwardly in the way a person does when they want to say something but don’t know how to open up. In the end, her face turns solid, her eyes narrow. “Save her,” she says, voice steady. “Save her, Spike.”
