First, Last, and in Between

by Jamie Bennett

  ∞

  Isobel

  I was right about this: if Rory was back to doing what he had done before, whatever it was that had led to him having a duffle bag of coke that didn’t really belong to him, whatever had led to him killing someone and going to prison, then I wasn’t going to be around him. I had known him a million years ago, and he had done me a little favor by giving me dinner. I had repaid him tonight by picking him up. I finished refilling the bowl with warm water and rinsed the rag, then swallowed and nodded my head to reassure myself. Selling and losing the stuff in his bag so that he was in trouble now…that wasn’t my fault. He had admitted himself that he shouldn’t have given it to me. I would help him now and then send him on his way.

  But Rory was asleep when I returned to the living room. His head had fallen back onto Rella’s cushion, his dark hair stark against the white towel that I’d spread underneath him. His skin almost blended in with it—he was so pale. I put down the bowl and pulled over a little footstool to sit next to him. Even in his sleep, he looked worried. I ran my fingertip over the bruise forming on his sharp cheekbone and he twitched away from my touch. All his features were sharp and strong, from his dark, arched eyebrows to the cut of his jaw. I touched that, too, even more carefully. Someone had hit him there, as well. He had shaved off his beard and cut his hair sometime in the last eight years and I studied the face that had been hidden before. He was handsome, in a different way from Kash. I liked how he looked, even hurt like this.

  I took the rag and dipped it into the bowl of water and gently wiped a smear of blood from his chin, then worked my way down his neck, over the rolling, hard muscles of his chest and stomach. I washed his long, heavy arms, gently and methodically, and I cleaned the blood off his fingers. They were unmarked; whatever had happened, he hadn’t been fighting back. This had been a beating, not a brawl. How many of them had hurt him? I had to change the water at least six times because he was so covered in gore. I tried not to gag as I poured out the bowl into Rella’s kitchen sink, which I also scrubbed clean when I was done.

  Rory stayed asleep the whole time, his breathing even and slow. I got a blanket and pulled it up over his bare chest when I was finished, tucking it around him and smoothing it, and then adjusting the pillow behind his back to try to make him more comfortable. The couch was really Rella- and not Rory-sized, but at least it wasn’t breaking like my chair. I sat on the stool and looked at him for a long, long time, until the grey sky outside started to lighten a little bit with the morning. Then I sat in Rella’s wingchair, covered myself in her afghan, and let my eyes finally shut.

  “What in the Sam Hill?”

  My eyes flew open again at the sound of Rella’s exclamation. It felt like I had just closed them a second before.

  “Do you want to explain what you’re doing asleep in my chair, Izzie? Did something happen? And what’s this on my floor?”

  I sat up straight, confused. The couch was empty; the blanket was folded neatly and hung over its arm and the towels that Rory had lain on were tucked underneath it. I reached and touched the cushion and it was cold. “What? What’s happening?”

  Rella pointed to a spot on the floor. “That’s what I’m asking you! Why are you here? And what is this?”

  Oh, no. Blood… “Rella, no,” I protested as she bent slowly down. “I’ll get that!”

  She held up a cloth smeared with dirt. Not blood, dirt. “Did you track mud in? Izzie, you washed that floor with your own two hands for me! Do yourself the courtesy of removing your shoes when you enter.” She shook her head as she looked at me closely and frowned. Rella was grumpy, pre-coffee. “Are you going to church in that getup?”

  I glanced down at my pajamas. “No, I need to change. Give me a minute.” She was still asking why in the Sam Hill I had been sleeping away in her chair as I picked up my purse from where I had dropped it the night before, and hurried out of her door.

  Where had he gone? Where was he?

  “Where’s your mind today?” Rella whispered. She nudged me to sit back down as the priest began the homily. She looked at my face, forehead wrinkled. “Did something happen with your mother? Were you afraid to sleep in your apartment?”

  I had to have been acting pretty off for Rella to talk in church. I shook my head and gave her a thumbs up, but she only frowned more. I hadn’t told her anything about Rory bleeding on her couch, because there were way too many parts of that story that would worry her. Instead, I had said that I had been really tired when I came in for the night.

  “Too tired to go upstairs to your own bed?” she had asked me skeptically as we had slowly made our way to church that morning. “And who were you out with?”

  Which had led to more bad lies from me, which she also didn’t believe, and had then led to an interrogation all the way until we arrived at the church. I had mostly convinced her that I wasn’t up to anything terrible, and that I wasn’t in any trouble, and she reluctantly left me alone as she saw her friends in the narthex. Rella’s attention immediately went to the priest, but I spent the entire Mass mentally reviewing the night before, from the phone call when I’d decided to hop out of my semi-comfortable bed and run around town to find Rory, to tucking him in on the couch and watching him breathe, to waking up with him gone.

  Did he really not have anyone else who could have helped him? I had tried to call him that morning when I’d gone to my apartment to change, and the number he had used the night before didn’t work anymore. So how did anyone ever contact him? How had he gotten home? Did he really have a home? What about the people who had hurt him like that—was he even safe? How much money did he owe, and how was he planning on getting it? Had my makeshift bandage held, or was he bleeding all over again?

  I remembered washing him, the feel of his skin, his huge, quiet body while he slept. He was so big, but he hadn’t scared me. I had felt…I wasn’t sure what that feeling was. Something soft and tender, which was stupid. I had been very stupid, especially in the way I had talked back and sassed him. Maybe he was hurt but he could have responded in a way that made me very sorry.

  All my thinking and stewing brought me to two main issues: why in in the world had I acted that way last night, and where was he this morning? I brought my hand up to the bump of my necklace under my shirt and listened to the priest talk about helping others. I had told Rory to leave me alone and that I wouldn’t be around him, but I wasn’t going to be able to rest my mind until I knew if he was all right. And then I would tell him the truth—the whole truth, and then we would really be even. It would be done, over. My necklace seemed to burn a little against my skin and I pressed it to my chest.

  “Rella, do you remember the guy we met walking home last week?” I asked, as we finally got ourselves away from the church.

  Her head under her spring hat swung around, looking for someone. “Of course I remember!” she said. I waited. “Remind me,” she said grudgingly, so I talked about Rory, and how we’d seen him on the sidewalk, how he’d come back to her apartment.

  Rella considered and then nodded. “Oh, yes, Rory. The big one. He’s not from Detroit.”

  “Right,” I agreed. “But I’m thinking about what he said about where he lives now.” She had asked him lots of questions, but I had been so scared that day that I hadn’t been following the conversation very well.

  “Did he tell us where he lives?” Her brow furrowed again, as she tried to think. “I don’t recall.”

  “It’s ok,” I told her. It had been a very long shot that she would. “It doesn’t really matter. I was just remembering how you two talked a lot while I was getting tea.” I thought back to the snippets I’d gotten when I looked out from the kitchen to make sure she was safe. “One time you were saying that Barry liked to build things, that he’d had a shop in your garage on Buena Vista.”

  “Wood,” she said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “That big man, Rory, he’s like my Barry. He likes to work with his hands too,�
� she told me, and I nodded as if I knew what she was talking about. “Don’t placate me, Izzie Starr!” Rella huffed. “I know what I’m saying. That was what we talked about. He mentioned that he was interested in woodworking, and that was the job he was looking to get. He’d done some training in it when he’d been away from the city.”

  In prison. He’d learned woodworking in prison? “Do you really remember that?” I asked. “It’s important.”

  “Why is it so important?” she asked me suspiciously. “Do I need to worry about you and him?”

  “No. No!” I repeated, when she still looked questioning.

  Rella stopped on the sidewalk and rubbed her hip, frowning. “I hope not. I hope you know that you can tell me things.”

  “I do know that,” I said, and thought of all the stuff I’d never, ever tell her. “Are you feeling ok?”

  “I’m achy all over because I didn’t sleep well last night. Did you, in that chair?”

  “It was fine,” I said dismissively, and started talking about some of the announcements we’d heard today at church, and if she was going to bingo, and that got us home without any more discussion about why I’d been in her apartment. It wasn’t that unusual, anyway—especially when I’d been younger, I’d had nightmares, and sometimes I would let myself in to sleep on her couch. And the thought of Rella’s couch brought Rory to my mind again, but he hadn’t really been far away from it.

  When Rella went to nap, I waited for Kash to call me, and I did some research on woodshops in Detroit. I wasn’t sure if she was really remembering this correctly, but it was the only clue to Rory that I had. The longer I sat there, the more I thought about him threatened and hurt, and the more I felt like I needed to find him. I felt like I owed him some more.

  Chapter 4

  Rory

  I saw Cal’s mouth moving, so I stopped the saw and pulled off the ear muffs he made sure we all wore. “…here for you,” he was saying when I finally could hear him, and then he went back to his own project. When I didn’t move right away, he pointed toward the entrance, and still confused, I walked over to the old steel door and rolled it open.

  She was there on the dirty concrete ramp with her white-blonde hair swirling in the wind, looking small and cold, and also scared. “Isobel?” I asked. “What in the hell are you doing here?”

  “Oh,” she said, and her eyes got big. She cupped her own jaw as she stared at me. “Your face. Can you even chew? It’s so hard when it’s your jaw. Are your teeth ok?”

  “I’m fine,” I told her, and stood straight, even though it pulled on the cut across my stomach and I hoped it hadn’t opened back up. “What are you doing here?” I asked her again. “How did you find me?”

  “You told Rella that you did wood stuff,” she answered. “It wasn’t very hard to figure it out. There aren’t that many woodshops in the city.”

  A spattering of water blew off the roof onto her and she flinched a little. “Come inside,” I said, and stood back to let her pass into the old building. It had been a foundry in a past life, but now it was full of woodworking machinery and materials. And a whole lot of yellow dust.

  Another guy, Sergio, pushed up his safety goggles when we walked by and his eyes widened when they caught a glimpse of Isobel. She sure didn’t fit in here, with how delicate and clean she looked, so beautiful, too. She didn’t fit in with me at all, either. I stared at him until he jerked his face down and went back to routing dadoes.

  “Come to the back,” I said loudly over the machines, and I led her into a dank little room with an ancient coffee maker. The noise quieted when I shut the door, sealing us in. I sat down in one of the chairs, trying not to let her see me wince when I moved, and lit a cigarette. There were already two overflowing ashtrays on the scratched table between us.

  She sat across from me. “Is your stomach bothering you? Where you got cut?” She had noticed my expression.

  I shook my head. “I’m fine. No problems.”

  She still stared at me, biting her lip. “It doesn’t look like you’re fine. I’m surprised you could get out of bed.”

  “What are you doing here, Isobel?”

  Maybe I had sounded angry, because she immediately looked wary, and her eyes darted toward the closed door. “I was a little worried,” she said, “on Sunday morning when I woke up and you weren’t there.”

  “I thought your friend Rella might not like finding me on her nice sofa.”

  “But you didn’t leave me any way to get in touch with you!” she exclaimed. “You have my phone number, somehow, and you know where I live and you recognized my car, and I don’t even know anything about you.”

  “Why did you need me?”

  Isobel looked around again, eyes on the door, the dirty window, back to me. She looked like she wanted to run. I put both my hands on the table where she could see them, fingers spread and palms open, so she knew I didn’t have anything in them. Of course, she could have been scared that I would just kill her with my hands. She knew why I had spent those years in prison.

  “I didn’t tell you something before. I mean, I left it out, and I wanted to tell you now,” she said. “It’s about the bag you gave me eight years ago. I have something for you.” She waited for a moment, gauging my reaction, but I stayed calm and didn’t let on that my heart had started beating harder. She reached to the back of her long, beautiful neck and undid the clasp of a chain she had hanging there. “Here,” she told me. She stood and leaned over the table and held out her hand, and when I reached mine underneath it, she opened her fingers and let her necklace fall into it. Her necklace, with the key attached.

  “My key,” I stated flatly, staring at what I now held. “You had my key.”

  She kept her eyes on me and started to edge away from the table toward the door. “I didn’t know what it was for when I went through your bag when I was a kid, so I saved it. A while later, Rella saw it and said it was for a safety deposit box at a bank.”

  “But you didn’t know which bank, or which box, so you couldn’t try to get into it,” I said, keeping my voice flat and measured. I jabbed my cigarette into one of the ashtrays, snubbing it out and spilling some grey, dusty residue onto the scarred tabletop.

  Isobel shook her head, no. I wasn’t sure what she was denying, but I was so angry that I didn’t much care. “Why didn’t you tell me that you had this when I asked if you about it?”

  “I—I thought I should keep it, if I needed to use it,” she said slowly.

  “You thought you could use it to take more from me? Or, you thought that you could use it against me somehow. Hold it over me,” I clarified, and I didn’t sound so calm anymore. “You wanted leverage.”

  “No! No, not like that,” she protested, “not like I was going to try to get more money or whatever. But I didn’t know how you would react when I told you that I didn’t have your stuff anymore, that I had sold your guns and the drugs were gone. If you were going to get angry and try something on me, then I could have used the key to protect myself, to tell you that I’d give it to you if you’d stop hurting me.” The words spilled out of her as she edged ever closer to the door. She stretched out her hand a little for the handle, but there was no way she would have made it out of the room if I tried to stop her. I considered trying to stop her.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  Her fingers grabbed at the air and she kept moving. “I wanted to give you the key, and now I’m leaving. I have stuff I have to do.” Her voice shook and so did her hand. “People know I’m here. Rella knows where I am right now,” she added.

  “Why are you giving the key to me now? You don’t think you need the leverage anymore? You’re obviously scared out of your damn mind of me, telling me that Rella knows your whereabouts. What did I ever do to you to make you so sure that I’m going to hurt you?”

  “You didn’t—nothing. I’m not scared. I don’t think that,” she stammered.

  Right.

  “I don’t wan
t you to get beat up again like you were on Saturday,” she blurted out. “You said before that you needed that key and maybe it can help you. That’s why I gave it back.” She had made it over to the exit and her hand closed around the handle. She still hadn’t thought it through, though, because the door swung inward. I could have had it slammed shut and locked before it even opened a few inches, and she’d be trapped in here with me. I watched her throat move as she convulsively swallowed.

  “The lasagna didn’t work,” I mentioned.

  Isobel stared at me. “What?”

  “Back when you were a kid and I gave you food, you calmed down some and we were friendly. I thought I’d do it again.” I put my hands back on the table and blew out air, releasing the anger like they’d taught me to do in the group therapy sessions in prison. It was smart, her holding back the key. It pissed me off, yes, but it had been a good move for her to keep a little something in her back pocket. I closed my fingers around it. And now I had it anyway, and maybe now, most of my problems were over.

  Maybe.

  “That was why you brought dinner to me? So I would be calm and we could be friends?” she asked, and I nodded at her. It had been one of the reasons; that, and wanting to see her again. “It did work,” she admitted. “Some. But I don’t know you very well. Actually, I don’t know you at all, so I’m cautious, but isn’t personal,” she continued, and I watched her unconsciously release the door handle as she started to relax again. Maybe she thought she was cautious, and maybe it had been smart to hold onto the key, but she also made a lot of mistakes. There was no reason, no reason at all for her to get into this room with me, where no one else could hear her over the noise of the saws and probably no one would care what I did. I didn’t believe for a second that she had told Rella where she was. The girl just kept on lying, but that had been a smart one. Even if I had seen through it.