First, Last, and in Between

by Jamie Bennett

  “Hey.” I knelt down in front of her. “How are you doing?”

  “People just shot at us. They were trying to kill you!”

  “I’m sorry,” I told her. “I’m sorry, and nothing like that will happen again.”

  She reached and took ahold of my shirt, gripping it in her fists. “You don’t know that. We should go! Let’s just go, Rory.”

  “I can’t. Anyway, what about Rella? Your mom?”

  She flinched a little and I was sorry I’d said it. “Then just you,” she urged. “You go and get away, up to your family where you’ll be safe. I want you to leave.” She fisted my shirt more tightly as she said the words, anchoring me to her.

  I leaned forward to kiss her. “No, I’m not going anywhere without you. Just for a little while,” I clarified. “And then, when this is done, we’ll go see my family. They should meet you.” I kissed her again until she got that soft, dizzy look instead of the terror from before. “You stay here with Ronnie—”

  “Send her in with me,” a thin voice called, and Leopold’s dad gestured at us with one wrinkled hand from the doorway of the house, where he’d been watching.

  I looked over at him and nodded. “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to. But I wouldn’t mind you being inside,” I said quietly. She was safe here behind the compound’s gate and high walls, I reminded myself, but interior would be even better. I drew her to her feet.

  “Is he some kind of pervert?” Isobel asked me. “Is that why he wants me to come in the house?”

  “You think I’d send you off with him if he was?” Maybe her mother hadn’t protected her, but I would. “No, he’s just an old man. A very smart, very weak, old man.”

  She shrugged a little, disbelieving. “Sure. Whatever.”

  God damn it. This wasn’t how any of this was supposed to go. I kissed her again at the door to the house. “I’ll be back soon.”

  “Can you please…” she started, but then stopped. “No, I know you won’t listen to me. Give me your parents’ phone number, for just in case.”

  I rattled it off for her. “Why do you need it? Just in case, what?”

  “In case I have to call them to tell them that you’ll never be coming home,” she answered, and started to cry. But she pushed my hands away when I reached for her and she followed where the nurse had gone into the front room.

  I listened in the foyer for a moment, wanting so much to go after her that I had to hold onto the sides of the door so that I wouldn’t. “Isobel,” I heard the old man repeat when she’d said her name. “You look like a woman I knew, a long time ago. I left her a hundred-dollar tip,” he continued in his reedy voice.

  “That’s a movie,” Isobel answered and the old man creaked his laugh, but I pushed myself away and went to go find Memphis. I was partway down the driveway in Ronnie’s car when I looked in the mirror and saw her running after me, yelling to stop. I did and got out, opening my arms just as she threw herself into them.

  “I love you,” Isobel told me. “Please come back. Please, please come back.”

  “I will.” I kissed her. “I always will, to you.” I held her for a long time before I made myself let go and I watched her go back toward the house, turning around every few steps to look at me with big, scared eyes. This had to end, now.

  Two hours later, I was saying the same things I had already said before. Wasn’t that the definition of crazy? Repeating yourself and hoping for different results? Here I was again, sitting in the dingy living room and asking the same questions, assuring this woman that I wasn’t trying to kill her like her boyfriend was trying to kill me.

  “I’m not threatening you, Mikayla.”

  She held her kid, Memphis’ kid, even tighter, and he squirmed in her arms, calling, “Mama!”

  “He’s shooting at me.”

  “Memphis is shooting at you?” She sounded disbelieving.

  “Not himself,” I explained, which made her nod. No, Memphis wouldn’t want to do it himself. Too risky. He was much more comfortable going this route, where his wasn’t the actual finger on the trigger.

  “I haven’t seen him…” she started to tell me, but then stopped, and sighed. “He was here a few days ago. In the middle of the night, so whoever’s watching this house wouldn’t see. He snuck in around the back and knocked on my window.”

  “If he would give me what he owes me, I would leave him alone. He’s making this a lot worse.”

  “I told him that!” Mikayla answered. “I told him, ‘Pay the big guy and you don’t have to hide!’ But he said he doesn’t have the money.”

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit. “He doesn’t have the money,” I echoed.

  “No, that was a lie,” she went on angrily. “He only said that because I think that whore Essie is pregnant and he’s giving everything to her. And he thinks he needs to be all hard, to show people he can take you on and come out on top. He doesn’t want to make you go away, he wants to win.”

  “All I want is what he took from me. He took my money and I need it to pay off what I owe, and then I’ll leave. I don’t want to hurt him or anyone else, not anymore.” I looked up and she was staring at me.

  “You’re not that scary,” she said, and sounded very surprised. She loosened her grip a little and her son finally wiggled himself free. He ran to a pile of toys in the corner and I watched him, thinking that I’d like to be free, too.

  I ran my hand over my face. “I need this to be over. I can’t get in trouble again and if I run, I’ll always be running. Who the hell knows when someone will be taking another shot at me, Memphis or Janko or someone else, no matter where I am? I’ll be watching my back for the rest of my life.” I’d also be watching Isobel’s, and I couldn’t let myself even think about what might have happened to her today. And why was I telling this woman my life story?

  Mikayla was still staring at me. “You know, when Memphis came here, he had just left Essie. I could smell her on him. Whore,” she said fiercely.

  “Great.”

  “No, I mean I think that’s where he’s been staying. He told me he was at some hotel out in Birmingham but he’s lying. He’s with her,” she told me vehemently, but I shook my head.

  “No, he isn’t. I haven’t been able to figure out where he’s been sleeping.” Memphis was tricky, which was how he had survived in our former business for so long.

  “Really? He really isn’t with her?” Mikayla’s face softened. “I didn’t believe him. I guess I should have trusted him.”

  I could only shake my head. No, that was a mistake. “You—”

  We both heard the noise coming from the back of the house. I held up my finger to Mikayla. “Don’t make one sound.” Maybe she had said I wasn’t so scary before, but now she put her palm over her mouth and nodded. She waved her other hand to the little boy, gesturing him over to her, but he ignored it and pushed his plastic train, making a chuffing noise.

  I put my back against the wall, out of the sightline of the door to the room, and I waited. It was him, I knew it was him.

  “Mikayla? Where are you hiding?” a voice called. There was a soft thud as something dropped on the floor, then we heard the refrigerator open and a can pop. “Damn it, you know I hate this brand. Why do you buy this cat piss? Don’t you have anything to eat around here? I can’t stay, so don’t ask,” he continued. “I need you to take something and keep it for me for a while until I can get Rory off my back.”

  The little boy’s head tilted up. “Dada?” he called, and Mikayla gestured frantically to him. And then Memphis walked into that little room with us.

  “Hey, buddy,” I said softly. “Long time, no see.”

  He froze and looked at the gun in my hand. His mouth opened and his throat pumped a few times before he said, “Rory.”

  “Yeah, your old friend, Rory. The guy you’ve been trying to kill, remember me? I want my money.” I could see the watch on his arm; that would take care of part of it. He had always liked to carry a lot of ca
sh to flash around. Maybe it would be enough to finish this right now. “Give me what you owe, Memphis, and I’ll leave. I only want what you took.”

  His throat moved again and he got the same expression he always made right before he was going to lie. “I didn’t take your money. You’ve been all over the city telling people that I stole from you, and I don’t appreciate it.” I watched a bead of sweat roll down the side of his face.

  “Yeah, I didn’t appreciate you giving us all up to the police and spending more than eight years of my life in prison, either.”

  “You did that?” Mikayla asked him. “You informed on them? Janko’s going to kill you, Memphis.”

  “Shut up!” he barked, and the little boy started to cry. He dropped the plastic train and ran toward his mother, but Memphis reached and grabbed him, and then I saw the gun. Memphis didn’t point it at me—he held the kid in front of his body, a human shield of his son, and his gun nuzzled up against the little boy’s side.

  “No!” Mikayla screamed, and Memphis shouted at her again to shut up, and the little boy cried louder.

  My voice cut through all that. “Put him down, you asshole. You’re going to hurt your own son? What’s the matter with you?”

  “Drop it, Rory. I mean it,” Memphis warned. His arms jerked and the muzzle got closer to the kid. His crying ratcheted up to loud, continuous wails.

  What in the hell was I going to do, let him kill this little boy? I bent and put my gun on the table and held up my hands, palms out. “Ok, yeah. Now put him down.”

  “Get that,” Memphis told Mikayla, and she reached with shaking fingers to grab my gun and stuff it into the couch cushions. But he didn’t let go of the little boy. “You should have left me alone, man,” he told me. “I wasn’t going to do anything to you.”

  “Janko’s going to kill me if I don’t pay him. I need my money, that’s all,” I answered. “You stole it from me. You turned us all in and you stole it from me.” I watched him, waiting for my opportunity. I wasn’t going to let him walk away from me again, and I definitely wasn’t going to let him hurt this kid.

  “Memphis, let him go,” Mikayla whispered. “You’re scaring him.” She held out her hands toward her sobbing son, but Memphis ignored her. She walked carefully around toward them, standing to the side and whispering to the little boy, trying to calm him down. I couldn’t hear what she was saying over the screaming.

  Memphis spoke louder. “You should have left Detroit,” he told me. “Why did you come back here?”

  Because I wanted to fix things, somehow. Because I hadn’t been sure of who I was, not anymore. Because of Isobel. “Give me my money and I’ll leave you alone.”

  He shook his head and his son’s legs swayed with the movement. The boy was limp, hysterical. “Why would I do that? I can’t let you go, either. Sorry, Rory.” He actually sounded a little regretful.

  “Then put the kid down and deal with me. Just me.”

  “Memphis, please,” Mikayla said, and pulled on his arm to loosen his hold on their son. “Memphis, please!”

  “Shut the hell up!” His eyes shifted to her and he tried to shake off her hands, and for one moment, the gun pointed toward the floor. I threw myself at them and I heard the gunshot, but all I was trying to do was to get the kid away from him. We were all rolling on the floor, all four of us, Mikayla screaming, the little boy shrieking, Memphis grunting. My one hand grabbed the kid’s leg and yanked and the other found the barrel of the gun and I pointed it as it went off again, and then there was a thud. And Memphis stopped fighting me.

  I sat up and Mikayla dropped the lamp with another thud and grabbed her son. Blood dripped down my cheek from somewhere, but I didn’t feel any pain. Memphis was out cold, a puddle of red forming around his head on the carpet as he bled from where she’d hit him.

  “Is the kid ok?”

  She was checking him and hugging and kissing him. “Memphis was going to…” She trailed off as she thought about what her boyfriend had almost done to their son. “Yeah, he’s ok.” She stared at me. “Are you?”

  I got myself up and the room tilted. My ears rang, too, from the shot going off way too close. “It just grazed me,” I said, but my voice sounded strange. I pressed my hand to my head to stop the bleeding. “Thank you for hitting him.”

  “I wasn’t saving you. I was saving my son.” She looked at me, then down at Memphis, and then she shuddered and took the little boy into the kitchen.

  I looked at Memphis too, and then I took out my phone and dialed a number. I was going to let Janko deal with this problem, with the snitch who’d nearly put him in prison right next to me. It wasn’t going to end well for Memphis. I took his gun, and the one that Mikayla had hidden in the couch, and I took his wallet out. There wasn’t anything close to enough cash in there for what was due to me. Shit.

  I leaned against the wall and listened to Mikayla soothing the little boy, to his sobs lessening. She stepped into the living room carrying him, his head on her shoulder and his thumb in his mouth. Her own face was streaked with tears.

  “Here.” She held out a towel to me with a very shaky hand. “You told Janko what Memphis did?”

  I nodded. “I’ll tie him up but we need to leave before anyone comes.”

  She nodded. “Memphis deserves what he’s going to get. He was going to…to his own son,” she said, and kissed the little boy’s head.

  I nodded again.

  “He left a big bag in the kitchen by the refrigerator.” She swallowed. “We should see what’s inside.”

  I followed her into the room and pulled on the zipper, and I was sent right back to where I’d been all those years before, when I’d handed my own duffle to Isobel. Memphis’ bag was full of money, guns, and drugs, and I looked at it, knowing this was my freedom.

  “I’m taking what Memphis owes me and I’ll wait here for Janko and pay him back,” I said, and extracted two stacks of bills. “You take the rest. Do you have somewhere to go?”

  Mikayla nodded and picked up the bag. “Do you?”

  I did. I had Isobel, and now, she had all of me, too.

  Epilogue

  Isobel

  “Are you ready?” I looked across the car at Rory. He had been very, very quiet on the way here, like not saying a word for the last hour or so of the trip. And I had noticed him patting his pocket, too, like he was feeling for where his cigarettes had been, even though it had been months since he had smoked.

  “Yeah, I’m ready.”

  But he didn’t move. I unclicked my seatbelt and crawled across the seat of our new car—new to us, and very nice since I’d cleaned the interior from top to bottom, and he’d waxed and buffed the outside. Rory had gotten rid of the SUV, the one covered in bullet holes, and I’d never wanted to see it again. I didn’t even let myself think about that day very much, except for the part when I saw Rory walking toward the house where I was sitting inside with the weird old man. I’d run to the door and thrown it open and he stood there, bloody and smiling. And then we’d been in each other’s arms, and we hadn’t really let go, still. I kissed his cheek now and felt his body relax against me as he nuzzled into my hair.

  “Hi, baby.”

  “Hi,” I answered, and kissed his mouth. That kept us busy for a while, and I felt him relax even more. When I pulled away, he was smiling again.

  A little mew made us look into the back seat.

  “Is Jory ok?”

  “Her name isn’t Jory,” I corrected, because the vet had determined for sure that our cat was a girl. Even though Rory insisted that his brother wouldn’t mind having a girl cat named after him, I thought we should save “Jory” for someone else. Like, maybe we’d have a son someday. I smiled too, which made Rory kiss me back.

  “My mom loves cats,” he noted, and stared at his parents’ house. “She’ll be happy to meet you, too.”

  “Are you ready to go in?” I asked again.

  No, apparently not yet. We had been parked on the street
in front of his mom and dad’s house for quite a while, and he still couldn’t bring himself to open the car door. But it had taken him a few months before he was able to drive up here, so this was a big step. Now Rory patted his pocket for cigarettes again, played with my hair, took out the cat to play with her, talked about Cal and what they were doing at the woodshop. I was happy to spend time with him, even if we were just sitting in a car together. But it was getting pretty hot in here the northern Michigan, August afternoon.

  “Jory wants to give me money to start my own woodshop. Not the cat, my brother,” he specified, and I laughed. “I told him it would be a loan. What do you think?”

  “I think that would be great,” I said enthusiastically. “I think you would love that and I know you would pay him back.”

  “Yeah, I have a good history of paying off my debts,” he noted, but I didn’t want to talk about what had happened when he paid off the money he’d owed back in Detroit, how they’d wanted him to work for them again, and the things they said would do to his former friend, Memphis, the snitch. I swallowed, remembering what Rory had admitted to me, which definitely wasn’t the whole story so I wouldn’t be scared. It had scared me anyway, but Memphis wouldn’t be bothering anybody, not ever again. And we were far, far away from all those guys now.

  “What do you think about this?” Rory asked me suddenly.

  “This, meaning us sitting in the car?”

  “No, this,” he said, and gestured to the world sweltering outside the open windows. “Could you see yourself up here? It’s nothing like the city.”

  I looked at the big, pretty trees, everything green, everything smelling like fresh air. Far, far away from the people he’d known who had want to hurt him.

  “Rella’s farther from here,” he said.