by Gabi Moore
I chuckled. “I don’t think it’s a competition baby…”
“Sure it is. I’ll win first place for hottest girlfriend and then I’ll win again when they see my mighty throbbing kundalini,” he said, nuzzling in for a kiss.
“Kundalini? Ooh, nice use of the lingo, I’m impressed.”
“Eh, I just saw it on the poster,” he grinned.
“So help us all, once your mighty throbbing kundalini’s out, I don’t know what we’ll do,” I giggled.
He smiled wide at me and we walked off. Our conversation fizzled as we walked on and he looked at this and that. It was all just a light-hearted joke. Just something cute and silly. But at the same time, something about it all aggravated me. I pushed everything out of my mind.
We picked up some veggies, chatted about this and that and soon found we had seen everything we wanted to get. It was time to go home. Time to face The Great Standoff, Part Two – which was easier to manage since I could always claim I was too tired.
When did my life get like this? Did I really go through years of therapy, a million stints in rehab and a mountain of self-help literature only to create a life so full of obligation I felt the only thing to save me from it was to dawdle a little longer at the honey stall on the way out?
Leo was awesome. He had a rough past, but he had overcome it. I clearly didn’t deserve him.
We climbed into the car and set off. The day was light, clean and easy, but my head was a mess. As he started the engine and began to drive us home, it occurred to me plain as day: I had a Madonna/whore complex. And now that I had so thoroughly stomped out the whore part of the equation, all I could do was be a better and better Madonna. And being a Madonna was boring as hell.
“Sorry for being a bit grumpy back there,” I said, and leaned over to squeeze his strong thigh. He turned to give me a warm, easy smile.
“Grumpy? You? On a Sunday morning? That’s almost unheard of!” he laughed, but he squeezed my knee back in silent acknowledgment.
“Yeah, well, I’ve just been kind of busy at work and stuff… lost a few clients lately and you know how it is, I’m always worried I’ll never find new ones…”
“Completely understood, baby,” he said, smiling and keeping his eyes on the road. “We’re building our lives together, we’re making a future, these things do take time.”
I looked down at the glittering rock on my finger, pretty but so alien. How could I have sex with a guy who was so sweet, gentle and considerate? I was like a baby duckling who had imprinted on all the bad boys in her formative years, and now she couldn’t even recognize a regular, normal guy as a potential mate. The more patient and understanding he was, the more turned off I felt.
It was tragic, when you thought about it.
So I didn’t think about it.
Lizzy at the group always said “don’t get rid of old behavior patterns, replace them”. So, for the time being, sexual frustration and a dead bedroom were the replacement on what honestly used to be a lot worse. I could just chalk it up to progress and hope like hell that I’d come around again.
‘Speaking of buildings,” I said, and changed the topic.
“Well, the inspectors came over the other day. I swear to god the red tape makes me want to scream. But, they line up the rings and I gotta jump through ‘em, right?”
I smiled and started to stroke his inner thigh a little, since my hand was already there.
In the early days of our relationship, he turned me on so much I had once made him pull over so I could suck him right there and then, because I couldn’t wait till we got home. I remembered days when just sliding a single finger up and down the inside of his leg would have him hard and speeding to get home as fast as possible. Today, though, it was more like a consolatory gesture – a friendly caress to apologize for the fact that we didn’t do that kind of thing anymore.
“I guess so. Busy week ahead?” I asked, pulling my hand away and staring out the window.
“Always. You?”
“Same. In fact, I might need to sort out some invoices and things this evening, my paperwork is looking like a hurricane went through it.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I think I’ll have an early night, too.”
And then I saw it. His broad jaw clenched a little, something moved over those perfect, arched lips of his and his hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“You OK?” I said.
He flashed me a tight smile.
“Sure, of course. Maybe I’ll squeeze some work in this evening too.”
And so it was. We drove on in silence, The Great Standoff descended on us like an invisible blanket. I loved Leo. More than anything in the world. And that was why the stakes felt so high. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, why I couldn’t just clean up my act and let go of my stupid past already.
But I would be the perfect girlfriend for him.
I had to.
Chapter Nine – Leo
I was in the same diner again. Two girls were in the same corner again, and they were a different pair from before, sure, but they were still the same, after everything’s said and done. They looked me over out the corner of their eyes and I looked them over, and we all looked and tried to pretend that nobody was looking.
And that’s when I saw Vito on the news.
The same grainy driver’s license pic they had been using for him for years now flashed across the screen. It was new laundering allegations, sure, new investigations into trafficking from Eastern Europe, but it was still all the same, after everything’s said and done. People like Vito are the whack-a-moles of the world – you beat them down in one place and they just pop up again some other place.
The TV volume was low so I couldn’t hear much, but a few images of pretty young women flashed across the TV screen. Prom-style shots, candid club photos. One was smiling broadly, glitter on her cheeks, a black choker on her neck. She looked so young. The words “Human trafficking on the rise?” rolled slowly across the screen beneath her.
As far as I can tell, the game has always been about masks. The first mask is the front business –a laundromat, a café or, in Roselli’s case, a sleazy strip club with a corner devoted to rigged slot machines. What lies underneath that is the real business. The illegal electronic imports, stolen cars, drugs, prostitutes.
But there are masks below that, too.
Vito and his cronies are family men. And in a family like theirs, there are always hierarchies. Keep peeling away the masks, keep looking past the goons and the runners and the bullshit bureaucrats and eventually you get to the inner circle, the people who are so loyal to one another it almost goes deeper than blood.
I looked at my watch. My jaw clamped involuntarily as I realized the fat fucker was late, again.
Lately, by some strange laws of relationship alchemy, Sophia had seemingly transferred all her sexual energy into browsing online for wedding crap instead. We hadn’t fucked in weeks, and yet she had decided and re-decided on a reception color scheme four thousand times over and written a million updated lists of guests and dress vendors and potential wedding favors (what the fuck is a wedding favor anyway?)
I wanted her to be my wife. More than anything. I would have cut off my right arm if it meant making her happy. But lately, I’d been feeling a little grated that the things that made her happy these days never seemed to have anything to do with my dick. I couldn’t tell if I was angry that this idiot was wasting my time again, or if I was just horny. Or both.
The bell on the door tinkled and I turned to see the fat, heaving figure I recognized as Joe Smith. The meeting before, he had told me his name and I had laughed that it sounded so fake, but he had shrugged and said that it just meant never having to lie to hotel staff whenever he was cheating on his wife.
He sat beside me, waved for an espresso and knotted his fingers in front of him on the counter, like some kind of budget funeral director about to talk business. I couldn’t believe that he was V
ito’s right hand man.
“The shipment has been collected,” he said. He took his espresso from the waitress and folded his thick lips round the rim for a sip.
“Good,” I said. “I’ve gotta wonder why Vito himself can’t come down here and tell me that.”
He nodded slowly.
“None of us know where Vito is, buddy,” he said and puckered for another sip. The tiny cup looked comical curled in his big, hairy hands.
“What?”
“What you mean what? You don’t watch the news? Vito’s gone. The feds have been on us for months now.”
I suddenly became aware of the hair on the back of my neck. Gone?
“We need you to hold another shipment for us,” he said, and drained the cup.
“No way. I told you I would help you out once. I did it. That’s it.”
He gave me a long, exhausted look.
“You don’t gotta do anything. You have the space already. You say nothing, we come, we go, it’s over. What’s your problem?”
“I don’t have a problem, this is your problem. This is Vito’s problem. I can’t help you, sorry.”
He frowned, pulling his bushy eyebrows into a clump in the middle of his forehead.
“Ok, I think I’m not explaining this properly or something. This is in your best interests,” he said, slowly, as though speaking to a child. “Believe me, you want to do this for Vito.”
I burst out laughing.
“It’s always like this with you guys, isn’t it? Are you all in some kind of budget gangster movie? I mean, fuck, it’s like you’re not even trying to be original.”
His expression remained stony.
“We’re in trouble, Leo.”
“So?”
“There’s this new guy, a real dangerous guy coming up. He’s trying to squeeze us out, Leo, he plays dirty, he’s got no loyalty, no nothing.”
I shook my head in disbelief. I felt like I was in a dream.
“You front us for a little while,” he said, “not forever, just till the heat blows over and we can take care of this punk once and for all. And Leo, we don’t expect you do it for nothing, you know that right?” He flicked his bleary eyes to me and for the first time made eye contact. They were the eyes of something cold-blooded, something not quite alive, but I thought I detected the faintest hint of desperation all the same.
“What’s in the containers?” I asked and stared hard back at him. He snapped his gaze away and to the empty coffee cup.
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Is it drugs? Girls?”
“I said I can’t tell you.”
I leaned back, exhaled loudly and crossed my hands.
“Yeah, no. Not touching it with a ten-foot pole. I’m not part of this mess, I’m not a character in this cheesy mobster movie you all are starring in.”
“It’s no movie, Leo,” he said and shot me a pleading look again. “You think there’s girls in the containers? I’m not saying there are. But so what if there are? You think there won’t be more girls after that? You think you can change any of this? The girls are coming in, one way or another.”
“But I won’t be a part of it,” I said simply.
He pushed his coffee cup away and laced his fingers again, then shook his head.
“What does he see in you anyway?”
“Who?”
“Fucking Vito. I don’t see it. All I see is some spoilt kid. What’s so special about you, huh?”
I said nothing.
“I’m serious, one of the most powerful men in the country thinks of you as a son and you have the balls to fuck around when he needs your help.”
“Nice try, but that’s not going to work on me.”
“Yeah, yeah, how could I forget? You’re too good to be a ‘gangster’ huh? You take when it suits you, and disappear when it’s your turn to pay back.”
“The answer is no.”
“Fine. You’re going to regret that.”
There was no threat in his voice. It wasn’t a warning. It was said simply, more like an observation. Like the way you’d notice that rain was forecast for the day or that gas had gone up in price. I couldn’t show him that he had shaken me, but something about how calmly he said these words brought the hairs prickling to the back of my neck again.
Chapter Ten – Sophia
“Ouch.”
I flinched and pulled back my hands.
“I’m sorry, too much pressure?”
The guy on the massage table twisted around to give me an awkward smile.
“Yeah, it feels like you’re trying to rip my flesh off my bones,” he laughed.
This was bad. Very bad. It had been happening more and more frequently. I didn’t understand it. I had spent extra time meditating and trying to calm and clear my mind. I had spoken to my mentors and tried to understand where all the tension was coming from. I had written it all out in my journal, I had lightened my workload and I had spent more time on my breathing ritual every morning before sessions.
Then why the fuck was I still hurting people?
“I’m sorry, is this any better?” I said and leaned in again more gently this time, rolling the heels of my hand over the intercostals and trying to make amends on his poor body. He winced and pulled back a little.
“Uh, yeah, no,” he said and all at once he was sitting up on the table. “I think I’m good. Maybe we can call it a day.”
“What?”
He looked at the clock.
“We only have another five minutes, and I think I’m good, I’ll take off, actually.” He gave me another awkward laugh.
Oh god. This was worse than I thought. I had been floundering and pinching and scratching and messing up the whole week. But now I had gotten so bad my client was actually walking out? I struggled to blink back tears.
“Yeah, sure, of course, I understand,” I said, and tried to hurry him out as fast as I could.
I had failed my client. I had hurt him instead of healed him. I wasn’t calm. I wasn’t composed. I wasn’t fucking Zen. I hurriedly closed the door after him and erupted in hot, embarrassed tears. Wiping them off in anger, I slammed shut my appointment book, threw on my coat and scarf and got ready to leave.
I was losing my touch. I couldn’t connect anymore. I couldn’t feel people anymore. For fuck’s sake, I couldn’t even feel myself. Was this a sex thing? I kept pushing Leo away, I knew I did, but I just couldn’t …do that right now. Not with him. Not with the stress of the wedding. With all the stress of …of …of what? My life going perfectly according to plan? I frowned hard and tried to get a grip on myself, thinking how pathetic I must have seemed right then. What the hell was wrong with me?
I opened the door again and gasped at the figure standing right in front of me. Before I could say anything, a pair of heavy black arms reached for me, spun me round hard and threw me to the floor. My bag dropped to the ground; spilling its contents right across the tiles, and in a heartbeat a hand went to my mouth to squeeze shut my screams.
I kicked and wriggled desperately against the wall of flesh behind me, but both my hands were pinned behind me with his other hand, and I was being viciously backed away, pulled from the practice and dragged backwards through the front door. My screams turned into desperate muffled moans against the gloved hand as I staggered to find my feet again. But it all happened so quickly. I was instantly outside in the chill air and then just as quickly thrown into a vehicle, where a strip of cloth was yanked across my mouth and another one knotted over my eyes, blotting everything out.
I lay on my side and tried to kick at the now closed door. The car was moving! Unseen hands moved quickly over me and soon my hands and feet were strapped together with painful cable ties. I bucked and kicked for a while, till a firm, angry hand pressed itself to the back of my neck and held me down, the pressure squeezing against my throat feeling like a threat all in itself. I swallowed hard and felt a torrent of tears seeping into the material of my blindfold. Sh
aking uncontrollably, my body went numb as the fear of what was happening washed over me.
“She’s hot,” said a disembodied voice.
“Don’t be a pig, it’s not like that,” said another voice, closer to me and to the right.
Both voices laughed, dry and cynical.
“Bit of a waste, though, right?” said the first voice. “Come on, at the next light, lift her shirt, I wanna see.”
“No way. Shut up. I told you it’s not like that,” said the second.
My heart was beating so hard it felt like a drum in my ears.
“Come on, just a peak. I bet she’s got really great tits.”
“Fucking animal” came the other voice.
My entire body prickled up as I thought I felt someone reach over and touching my stomach. But the touch never came. Instead we drove on in silence, nothing but my roaring heartbeat in my ears, and the horrifying realization that something was happening to my body.
I was wet.
Chapter Eleven – Leo
“I understand that, but she wouldn’t have gone anywhere, she wouldn’t have just stopped answering her phone, she wou—”
“Sir, please calm down, what I’m trying to tell you is that we can’t open an investigation just because she stopped answering your calls.”
My jaw tightened and I tried to remind myself to breathe. This wasn’t like her. She never did this. Sophia was a list maker. She was organized. She was never late. And she never, ever ignored my calls.
“Look,” I said, “it’s not just my calls she’s not taking.”
“Have you contacted her family? Her workplace?”
“She doesn’t have any family and her work …are you really telling me there’s nothing you can do about this?”
“Again, sir, we can look into it but to be honest, the most likely outcome is that she’s simply cut contact with you, we see this kind of thing all the time.”
“What? No. That’s not what happened. Something’s gone wrong, I’m telling you.”
“Sir, please calm down. Is she currently employed?”
