Dirty Power

by Ashley Bartlett

  “Yeah, about that.”

  “Cool.” I reached for the iPod. Reese was listening to Death Cab. Good for lazy summer days. Bad for staying awake on dark, cold nights. And it was fuckin’ cold out there.

  “I didn’t want to wake you guys.” She answered the question I hadn’t asked.

  “Ryan will sleep through anything.” I tried not to think about the last road trip we had been on and how Reese had taken advantage of Ryan’s deep sleep.

  “Play something loud and obnoxious.”

  “Ke$ha?”

  “Sure.” She sounded dubious. She should have. I had ulterior motives.

  It’s impossible to listen to Ke$ha and not be happy. Halfway through the first song, Reese was drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. By the end, she was singing. During the second song, she started rapping about a bottle of Jack, and I was laughing. There was even a little dancing involved.

  We almost had fun driving through Vegas. At one point, I looked over at her and smiled and I couldn’t feel anything else. Just happy. Sometimes the simple pleasure of driving and listening to loud music with a pretty girl is enough.

  Animal and Cannibal got us to the familiar stretch of highway where we were meeting Christopher and Breno. Reese dutifully followed my directions off the road until I told her to stop. Their fathers hadn’t arrived yet. No surprise. We’d lost time with Reese driving, but Ryan and I thought speed limits were for wimps. So we still beat the old dudes there.

  “This is it?” Reese asked.

  “Theoretically.”

  “Wait. You’re not sure?”

  “Ryan and I both remembered the same GPS coordinates.” I shrugged. Proof enough.

  “I guess we’ll find out.” Reese went to open the door.

  “Hey, wait.” It was an impulse. I probably should have stopped myself. But impulses are like that.

  “What?” She looked back at me.

  “Are we, you know, cool?”

  She stared at me so long I didn’t think she was going to say anything.

  “Meaning what?” she asked.

  “I get that we’re…over.” Damn, it was hard to say that part. “But do you still hate me?” Because I didn’t think I could stand it anymore if she hated me.

  “I don’t hate you. I don’t think I ever could hate you.”

  “Why? You have every right to. Every reason to.”

  “I thought I did. But I guess there aren’t as many reasons to hate you as I thought.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because you and Ryan never lie to each other.”

  “Huh?”

  She grabbed the door handle, popped it open.

  “I’m not a heavy sleeper like Ryan is,” she said. Then she got out of the car.

  Fuck me. She’d heard our entire conversation.

  Chapter Three

  “Have I told you how intelligent this idea was?” Christopher asked.

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  “Blow me,” was Ryan’s response.

  “Actually, our half of the gold is still here.” Reese pointed to the hole where the gold was just beginning to show through. “What happened to the half you tried to take care of?”

  Christopher opened his mouth to respond, but I spoke before he could.

  “If you even think about blaming me for that, I’ll punch you in the face again.”

  He closed his mouth.

  “Let’s not blame,” Breno said. “We have this gold. We will get the other half back.”

  “Dude,” Ryan said.

  “We have too many people in here,” I said. “Breno, get out. Ryan and I got this.”

  Breno hesitated, but then he got out of the hole. I watched Ryan’s face. He wanted to tell me to stop digging. Misguided protectiveness. But he couldn’t do it without telling everyone I’d been shot.

  “I’m fine,” I whispered to him.

  He grumbled something that sounded like, “Yeah, right.”

  I ignored him and kept digging. After a while, we were just scraping our shovels over the top of the gold.

  “That is probably enough. You can hand us the bars now,” Breno told us.

  “I think we know what we’re doing,” I said. Me, irritated? No.

  “Really?” Breno said. Reese looked at him with the oddest expression when he questioned me.

  “Yeah, we got this.”

  “Have you noticed that you are bleeding?” Breno asked me all superior and shit.

  “Fuck.” I looked at my arm. I’d stripped off my coat to dig. My shirt was slowly turning crimson over my bicep and on the inside of my elbow.

  “Get out of there, Cooper,” Breno said.

  I was going to tell him to shove it, but Christopher and Reese looked like they were gonna back him up, so I just climbed out.

  “Happy?” I asked. I wasn’t.

  “Ecstatic. Come on.” Breno cupped my other arm and led me to the open truck bed. “Sit here. I have a first aid kit in the cab.”

  “Fine.” I watched the twins and Christopher and waited for him to come back. Ryan was tossing bars out of the hole for Reese and Christopher to pick up. Reese and Christopher didn’t look happy. Probably because they hadn’t done any work yet. We’d given up on trying to make them do physical labor. Their clothes were too pretty.

  Breno came back and set a white plastic box next to me.

  “Take off your shirt.”

  “We can do this later,” I said.

  “Or we can do it now.” He opened the box and waited. Not a fight I was going to win. I took off my shirt and sat there shivering in a sweaty T-shirt.

  “It’s fucking cold.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. The truck isn’t any warmer. Do you think your car will be?”

  “No.”

  “All right. Then I will try to be quick.”

  I let him tease the tape off my upper arm until the gash underneath was exposed. He frowned.

  “It will heal soon enough.”

  “You tore out a couple of your stitches.” He mopped up the leaking blood with a piece of gauze.

  “That explains why it feels shitty.”

  “I’m so sorry.” And he sounded sorry.

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, I meant that I am sorry this happened to you,” Breno said. He was studying my arm like it was the most important thing in the world.

  “I’m fine. Really. And it was my fault anyway.”

  “But if we had contacted you sooner, then I could have protected you.” Angrily, he tossed the bloody gauze down. Then he grabbed an alcohol pad and resumed his cleaning.

  “Hey.” I grabbed his forearm so he would stop cleaning. “Not your fault. You did the best you could.”

  Breno looked up at me. His eyes were glittering like Reese’s. I heard a noise behind Breno. I leaned to look behind him and met Reese’s gaze. She was standing there with an armload of wrapped gold bars staring at the strangely intimate scene of her father taking care of me.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” I nodded.

  “Is she actually?” she asked Breno.

  “Yes. She pulled a few stitches. Once we stop, I can give her new ones if she needs them.”

  “Good.” Reese moved around Breno and dropped the bars onto the truck bed. She seemed pained by something, but I wasn’t sure what it was.

  “Will they ever forgive me?” Breno asked as Reese walked away. “I’m sorry. Never mind. It isn’t fair to ask you that.”

  “They will. It will take time, but…” I shrugged.

  “Thank you.” Breno returned to his task.

  When he’d cleaned both wounds and put fresh bandages on each, he handed me my shirt. I pulled it on.

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll grab your coat.” He closed up the first aid kit.

  “No, it’s okay. I can’t work with it on.”

  “You’re done working.”

  “No, I’m not. We need to get o
n the road,” I said.

  “The four of us are capable of filling in a hole,” Breno pointed out far too reasonably.

  “Whatever.”

  I let him retrieve my jacket from my car. With a promise to only observe, Breno let me stand at the edge of the hole.

  “How many more are in there?” I asked Ryan.

  “Some.” He shrugged.

  “Wait, you’re not counting them?” Reese asked him.

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?” Reese asked.

  “Can’t count. Too stupid,” Ryan said.

  “It’s fine. We can count them in the truck,” I told her.

  Reese rolled her eyes and grabbed a couple more bars. Loading was a bitch. Each bar was almost thirty pounds. They added up fast. Not that it mattered to me. My new job was looking pretty.

  When Ryan had tossed out all the gold, he and Breno started to shovel the dirt back in. Probably because Christopher was carrying more bars each trip than anyone else. And he was moving faster. Breno needed butch points to make up for it.

  “I’m hungry,” I announced to the group. As if they cared.

  “Bro,” Ryan said.

  “Yeah, hurry up,” Reese told Ryan and Breno.

  “There are snacks in the truck,” Christopher said.

  “Serious?” I ditched them to find food. I was pretty sure I’d only eaten Cheetos and Zebra Cakes since breakfast. In the cab of Breno and Christopher’s rented truck, I found a cooler. Bottled water and baby carrots. I kept searching, but that was it. I went back to the hole.

  “Did you find the food?” Christopher asked.

  “Fucking carrots,” I said.

  “Yes. And water,” he said.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Ryan stopped working to glare at Christopher.

  “What?” Christopher asked.

  “Carrots aren’t food,” I told him.

  “I agree,” Reese said.

  “I want something fried. And covered in melted cheese. Real food.”

  Christopher grimaced.

  “We can stop and get burgers after this,” Breno said.

  Ryan and I looked at him like he was crazy. He was crazy.

  “They don’t eat beef,” Reese told Breno.

  “I don’t understand.” Breno stopped shoveling.

  “Ryan and Coop. They don’t eat beef or pork,” she explained.

  “You kids are vegetarians?” he asked all confused.

  “No,” Reese answered for us. “They just don’t eat beef or pork. Chicken, turkey, and fish are okay.”

  “Why not?” Breno wanted to know.

  “Tastes gross,” I said.

  “Totally.” Ryan.

  “What about you?” Breno asked Reese.

  “I’m a carnivore,” she said.

  Breno just shook his head and shot Christopher a look.

  “What?” Christopher asked.

  “My son’s a vegetarian. It is your fault.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Christopher asked.

  “He’s a pansy,” Breno said.

  “Hey.” Reese sounded pissed. Ryan and I said nothing.

  “He isn’t a pansy,” Christopher said.

  They all looked to Ryan to see if he would say anything. He just shrugged and kept shoveling.

  “Shouldn’t you be defending yourself?” Breno finally asked.

  “I’m comfortable with myself. Don’t need to defend anything,” Ryan said. No one responded so he continued, “I’ve worn women’s underwear, dressed in drag, and rocked heels. I like pink. Sometimes I paint my nails. I once flirted with a guy just to get a video game. I wear skintight jeans because they make my ass look awesome. If you didn’t notice, my hair is long. I think it makes me look pretty. For two years in high school, I wore eye makeup. I stopped because it looked like hell in the morning. I spend more on hair and skin products than Reese does. And if you have a problem with any of that, then keep it to yourself.”

  I was stunned. That was the longest speech I’d heard from Ryan since freshman year of college when he actually had to give a speech in class. Reese was just as thrown. Christopher, oddly, looked proud.

  “No. No problem,” Breno lied.

  This was going to be a long couple of weeks.

  *

  Christopher and I had discussed switching cars for the drive to New Orleans. Like he and I could drive together and let Breno and the twins drive together so they would have time to talk. But after the stop in Vegas that seemed like a terrible idea.

  I could have used our day and a half of driving to tell the twins about Chicago and what I’d done there. I could have told them about watching Esau torture people. Maybe told them about the human trafficking operation their cousin had tried to get me to participate in. Or about the way Vito treated me like his kid. With equal parts pride and disappointment. I probably should have told them. Those moments in life may not be good anecdotes, but it’s bad to let them fester in silence.

  But I didn’t say anything.

  Instead, we talked about nothing. In the usual strain of familiar nothingness. Ryan mooned a couple cars. We got high and giggled in the backseat while Reese drove. Reese and Ryan played show tunes and sang them really, really loud.

  Ryan tried to convince us to go to the Grand Canyon. We said no. He offered to drive. We let him and lost two hours when he decided to go to the Grand Canyon anyway. Turned out it was just a big canyon.

  We stopped for a little while in Albuquerque. It was less than riveting. But it was better than being trapped in the car.

  In Texas, we made jokes about backward people and horror movies. Until we stopped in Dallas and it wasn’t lame. And then we kinda felt like jerks.

  Reese was at the wheel when we finally got to New Orleans. Unfamiliar cities are a bitch. She got us lost despite the GPS.

  “Where are we going?” Ryan wanted to know.

  “I don’t know, but figure it out. ’Cause I’m driving in circles,” Reese said.

  “Should we find a hotel?” I asked.

  “Totally. And food. I’m hungry.” Ryan.

  Reese gasped. “Oh my God. Oyster po-boy.”

  “Good call. Oyster po-boy,” I said.

  “I know, right?” Reese.

  “You’re a genius.”

  “Obviously.” Reese.

  “Huh? What just happened?” Ryan asked.

  “That’s what we want to eat,” I told him.

  “But you hate oysters. And do you even know what a po-boy is?” Ryan asked.

  “Not really. No. Pretty sure it’s a sandwich,” I said.

  “I’m so confused.”

  “I don’t hate oysters,” Reese said.

  “But you don’t like them either.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We want oyster po-boys,” I said.

  “Why?” he asked again.

  “Because we’re in New Orleans,” Reese said.

  We found a hotel, checked in, searched out oyster po-boys, and took them back to our room. I took one bite and immediately spit it back out.

  “I told you that you hated oysters,” Ryan said.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Want something you can swallow?” Reese offered.

  “Please.”

  Reese reached into the bag on the table and produced another paper-wrapped sandwich. Always prepared, that girl.

  “You’re the best.”

  “I know.”

  “If only someone would get me another beer.” I frowned at my empty bottle. Then I pouted out my bottom lip and gave Ryan my saddest eyes.

  “So fuckin’ needy.” He shook his head. But then he got up and grabbed two beers out of the small fridge. He twisted the top off mine before handing it to me. I couldn’t do that. Open a beer with my bare hand. But Ryan could, and he knew I found it super impressive.

  “So manly.”

  “Blow me.”

  Reese glared at us. Then she stole Ryan’s fresh beer. He got up and got himself anothe
r one with a long-suffering sigh. So put upon.

  “So what are we going to do?” Reese asked.

  “I’m gonna need you to narrow that question down,” I said.

  “I meant in the broad sense. Take the money and ditch them? Stick it out? Disappear? Thoughts? Feelings?”

  “I vote we give it some time. But it’s your call.” I shrugged. Not my decision.

  “If staying with them blows then we can always take off,” Ryan said.

  “True. I just didn’t like how he talked to you,” Reese said.

  “Question,” Ryan said. We waited, but he didn’t ask his question. Or say anything.

  “Ryan?” I asked.

  “Oh, yeah. Question. What do we call him?”

  “Call him?” I asked.

  “For real.” Reese nodded like Ryan was a genius. “Do we call him Breno? Dad? Breno seems accurate, but weird. And Dad just doesn’t make sense. He isn’t our dad, not really.”

  “Totally.” Ryan.

  “Are you asking me?” I wanted to know.

  “Yes.” Reese.

  “Why would I know? It’s your convoluted relationship. Not mine.”

  “We want your opinion,” Ryan said.

  “I don’t know. What feels right? When you think about him, what do you call him in your head?”

  “That dude.” Ryan.

  “Breno.” Reese.

  “Then call him Breno. Or…” I grinned. “Just don’t directly address him.”

  “So helpful.” Reese.

  “Bro.” Ryan.

  My disposable cell phone rang. The readout said it was Christopher. I handed it to Ryan because I was chewing. He answered, listened for a minute, shrugged, and hung up.

  “They just passed Shreveport. Won’t be here for like five hours.”

  Reese and I shrugged. That didn’t really affect us much.

  “Fruit loop?” I asked.

  “Yep,” Reese answered.

  “Are you talking in code on purpose today?” Ryan asked.

  “Gay town,” I said.

  “Is that some mythical queer talent or something? The ability to find any gay bar within fifty miles.”

  “Yes,” Reese lied for me.

  “Like gaydar. It’s queer magic.” I threw in some spirit fingers for good measure. He didn’t need to know I had looked it up online.

  “Okay, but I wanna get laid too,” Ryan said.

  “Not something you need to share with me,” Reese said.