by Abby Weeks
He had his fist in Fat Boy’s flabby face and in the same, fluid motion had his other hand on the back of Fat Boy’s head, his fingers gripping the thin, greasy hair. He brought Fat Boy’s face down into the solid wood of the bar, right in front of Rose. With his other hand he had a pint glass and it came crashing down on the back of Fat Boy’s head. Rose saw the glass perforate Fat Boy’s scalp.
“Apologize,” Serge said.
Fat Boy didn’t even know what was happening. He couldn’t understand how he had gotten himself into this situation so suddenly. He said nothing. His brain couldn’t work fast enough to tell him what to do.
“Apologize to this slut, right here, right now,” Serge said. “She came in with me you fat, stupid fuck. Didn’t you see that?”
“I’m sorry,” Fat Boy gasped but Serge was already looking across the room at the two members who were playing pool.
“Hey,” he said to them, “you two saw me come in with Rose, didn’t you?”
“Yes sir,” they both said.
“Well why the fuck didn’t you say something to Fat Boy here?”
They didn’t answer.
“You done apologizing?” he said to Fat Boy again.
“I’m sorry,” Fat Boy blurted out again.
Serge smacked his face against the bar and let Fat Boy’s limp body slide to the ground. Then he walked around the bar and picked up the paper package he’d brought from the office.
“Come on, bitch,” he called back to Rose. “Don’t make me come around there and get you.”
X
ROSE FELT STRANGE GETTING ONTO Serge’s bike behind him. Everything about him told her to detest him. He was violent, he was aggressive, and he’d captured her and forced her to work for his club as a stripper. She’d seen him beat that poor trucker’s face to a bloody pulp for absolutely no reason. Then he’d just smashed Fat Boy’s face in. She knew that was partially her fault but it didn’t change the fact that Serge was an out of control animal. He’d raped her. She’d been little more than a quivering mess on the floor of that booth the other night when he’d forced himself inside her and pleasured himself. He was the kind of man who she imagined probably couldn’t get it up unless some form of rape or violence was involved in the transaction.
Serge was a monster. She knew that. But she also knew that he was taking an interest in her. That was more than she’d had in a long time. She’d never wanted a man like Serge. Not ever. She liked tough guys, you couldn’t grow up around Montreal’s rough biker culture without having something for bad boys. She was attracted to biker guys. She liked the swagger, the confidence, the fact that they lived on the edge of the law. She was also attracted to the fact that they weren’t afraid to stand up to society for what they wanted to be. She knew that they often broke a few laws, fell foul of many of society’s standards, but she also knew that most of the bikers she’d grown up around were strong, brave men who lived and died by a certain code of honor.
She didn’t see any such code when she looked at Serge. He didn’t seem to live by the same standards as the men she’d grown up admiring. When she was a little girl, back when her father was still alive, she’d been impressed by the men he’d chosen to surround him with. Those men protected each other. They were true brothers. That was why it had hurt her so deeply when Rex Savage had betrayed that code by selling her out to the DRMC.
Serge and his crew seemed to be different. They didn’t serve each other. No bonds of brotherly loyalty seemed to hold them together. She could easily imagine Murdoch selling out Serge and the rest of the club if he thought he could get away with it. The only thing that seemed to keep DRMC members in line was fear.
Deuce was the worst of all. Rose had only heard the stories. She’d never even spoken to him. He spent most of his time down in Montreal, even though he was president of the Val-d’Or chapter. Rose didn’t really understand that but she was glad of it. From the stories she’d heard, she didn’t want Deuce to be getting too close to her. As far as she knew he’d never even been out to the Cat and she had every reason in the world to hope that never changed.
She got on the back of Serge’s bike and put her arms around his muscular waist and wondered if she could ever love a man like him. He was brutal, he was mean, and he was aggressive, but he was also strong. She needed someone to look after her. She needed someone to rescue her. She was dying where she was. She knew that if she was forced to spend too much longer alone with Murdoch at the Cat, stripping for five dollar tips in front of a bunch of truckers and loggers, she would completely lose herself. She wouldn’t be able to keep a hold of the person she was, of the person she wanted to be.
The question was, would she be able to keep a hold of that person if she was forcing herself to love a man like Serge? She knew she was getting ahead of herself. She knew that she didn’t even have much reason to think that Serge was going to make her his girl, but she still wondered what it would be like if he did.
Everything would change for her. She’d be rescued, in a manner of speaking. She supposed it wasn’t exactly rescuing if the man who’d captured her and put her into this slavery was the man who took her out of it. But at least her stint at the Cat would be over. She wouldn’t be fair game for any member of the club anymore. They wouldn’t be able to rape her whenever they felt like it. She could move into the town, live in Val-d’Or and have the respect, or fear, of the other women of the club. She might even be able to make a few friends. There must have been about fifteen club members in Val-d’Or. She could make friends with their girlfriends, maybe even start a family with Serge.
It wasn’t ideal. It wasn’t even what she wanted. She knew that her father would turn in his grave if he saw her end up with a guy like Serge. Serge was the type of man that her father had spent his life fighting against. If his grandchildren were going to be fathered by a man like that, it would be a cruel legacy. But then, her father never would have wanted her to be working as a stripper in a place like the Cat either, getting raped by Murdoch and Serge and the rest of the DRMC every chance they got.
If he’d still been alive, if he’d been there to do the job of protecting her, she wouldn’t have to make a decision like this. Maybe she didn’t have a choice anymore. Maybe it was simply a matter of survival now. She could either give in and shack up with a brute like Serge, or curl up and start the long, painful process of dying. She didn’t know anymore which was the worse fate.
*
THE AFTERNOON HAD WORN ON and it was a little cooler now than it had been when they’d left the Cat in the morning. Spring might be coming but it hadn’t arrived yet, not by a long shot. Serge must have noticed because he gave Rose his helmet to wear.
He drove down the Rue des Pins in Val-d’Or and pulled up outside a timber-framed bungalow.
“Wait here,” he said to her.
He took the keys with him. She waited on the bike while he went into the house. She was holding the paper package that Deuce had given him earlier and she wondered what was in it.
When Serge came back out he had her full-leather body suit. It was the suit she’d been wearing when she’d rode up two years ago. As soon as she saw it her eyes teared up. She couldn’t believe it was still there. It was like a lifeline connecting her back to her past.
“Oh my God,” she said. “You kept this?”
“I thought you might be cold,” he said and handed it to her.
She lifted it up to her face and inhaled, breathing in the comforting, reassuring smell of the leather. Maybe this really was happening. Maybe Serge had decided to make her his girl.
She didn’t know if that was something that should have made her laugh for joy or shudder in the worst type of fear.
*
ROSE GOT OFF THE BIKE and pulled the leather suit on over her jeans. It was still a perfect fit. She pulled the top up over her sweater and zipped it up. Her entire body was encased in the supple, black leather. It always made her feel like Catwoman when she had the suit on. S
he loved it. It was the first leather garment she’d ever made for herself. If she’d had to buy it it would have cost thousands of dollars.
“Jesus,” Serge said. “You look fucking amazing.”
Rose ignored him. She didn’t know if she wanted to encourage this relationship or not. She needed to find a way to survive but surely this wasn’t her only option. She was deeply conflicted about what was happening. She knew that he liked her, and she knew that there were things she could do to make him like her even more. She was an attractive girl and she’d never found it difficult to charm men. The question was whether she really wanted to charm a man like Serge. Once she started down that road there would be no going back. Once he got it in his head that she was his girl, that would be it. She would have to be committed one hundred percent. He would think of her as his property and any man who so much as looked at her would be taking a huge risk.
Was that really what she wanted?
Was she so desperate for protection, was her life at the Cat with Murdoch so bad that she was willing to allow herself to be taken by a man like Serge?
“Come on, baby, give me some sugar.”
She didn’t look at him. She threw her leg over the back of the motorcycle and got on.
“Hey,” Serge said. “I’m talking to you.”
She sighed, silently. Maybe she wouldn’t have to make up her mind. Maybe Serge would decide the issue for her. He took her face in his hand and squeezed her mouth, pinching it so that her lips puckered. Then he leaned in and kissed her, his tongue licking against the outside of her lips.
“Let’s ride,” he said, turning to the front.
He seemed to rev the engine harder than usual as he pulled out of the driveway. She pulled on the helmet, his helmet, and held on to his waist as the bike rolled down the street and out of town.
*
THEY RODE WEST ALONG THIRD Avenue and onto the Trans-Canada. There were already more trucks than there had been for most of the winter. It seemed to Rose that as soon as the winter began to give way, the commerce picked up. She saw a line of trucks hauling copper, zinc and lead up the incline of the road, slowly shifting gears as they climbed up out of the valley.
Serge rode past them on the eastbound lane, his left hand stretched out, catching the air.
Rose wondered about him. What was it that made him the way he was? She had seen absolutely no sign of any redeeming qualities in anything he did, and yet she knew that they must exist. There must be something good about the man.
He’d kept her leather racing suit safe for two years. That meant something. What had made him do that? Why would he hold onto something like that for someone he was going to force into slavery?
The highway continued west for a few miles before entering the tiny homestead of Malartic. The squat houses sat in rows close to the ground, hunkered down against the bleak winters that struck them every year. On such a nice afternoon it was hard for Rose to imagine just how brutal those winters could be.
After Malartic the road curved north and then west toward the town of Rouyn-Noranda. Serge didn’t slow as they rode down the main street and Rose noticed a few heads turn to watch them pass.
Another few miles and they crossed the provincial line into Ontario. A green road sign and a small log house was all that marked the border. The sign read, Thunder Bay, nine hundred kilometers. Rose tried to imagine the vastness of that distance, all of it covered in thick boreal forest. It was that forest, as much as anything the DRMC did, that held her captive at the Cat.
They rode on till they got to the small gas station at McGarry. It was on indian soil and so the gas was cheaper than it would be anywhere else. The indians didn’t have to pay the same taxes that other people paid. Serge pulled into the station and began to fill up.
Rose got off the back of the bike to stretch her legs. It was an intensely desolate place. The afternoon was stretching into early evening and the temperature was already dropping fast. She was glad she had the leather suit. Without it she would have been freezing on the back of the bike.
A blue and white sign over the gas pump said Guy’s. There was a little shop and an outhouse. In the window of the store was a sign for live bait. Across the street was a wooden shack that served breakfast and lunch.
“You want anything?” Serge asked her as he finished pumping the gas.
“No,” she said, and watched him walk across the lot toward the store. Then she thought better of it. If he was going to treat her like his woman, she might as well get what she could out of it. “See if they’ve got Du Maurier’s,” she called after him.
“They won’t,” he said.
The indians sold their own brands of cigarettes. They were a lot cheaper than the regular brands, tax free, but they had a much harsher taste.
“You want what they got?” Serge said.
“Sure.”
He nodded and went into the store. Rose walked over to the side of the highway and looked back the way they’d come. A low mist was rising off the trees. It would be very cold soon. She hoped they got home before dark. She looked at the sky. They had plenty of time to make it.
She turned and looked west toward their destination. It wasn’t much more than another ten or twenty miles. And then she saw something unexpected. There was a man walking by the side of the road. He was quite a ways in the distance, too far to make out much detail, but she thought it was odd. He was walking away from McGarry, and small and decrepit a place as it was, it was still a lot more habitable than the vast wilderness that lay to the west. At least there was a gas station and restaurant there. There were also a couple of houses, the last ones for quite a ways. She wondered where on earth any man could be walking to, headed out that way this close to nightfall.
Were there some logging huts she didn’t know about? It was possible but she didn’t think so. She shrugged. It was a strange sight.
Serge came back out of the store. She went over to the bike and got on it behind him. He gave her the cigarettes he’d bought.
She looked at them. “Ménage?” she said.
“That’s the only brand they had.”
“Really?”
Serge shrugged. He pulled out of the gas station and they were back on the highway. A minute later they passed the vagrant that Rose had seen walking. He looked tall and strong, with a confident stride. He was wearing a black leather jacket and black boots. He had scraggy, blonde hair that was long enough to touch his shoulders. That was all she had time to see before they’d passed him.
He didn’t look like one of the locals from the reserve. She’d been at that gas station a few times and would have noticed a guy that good-looking with long hair. Serge didn’t slow down to look at the guy but she knew he noticed him.
When they finally pulled up outside the Cat, the drifter was the first thing Serge mentioned.
“Did you see that guy?”
“Of course I saw him,” she said.
“What the hell’s a guy like that doing hitchhiking along here?”
“Was he hitchhiking?”
“He must have been. I don’t see any other way he got to be here.”
“Well, so what?”
“Something about him. I swear he’s a biker. I have half a mind to go back and find him.”
“What are you going to do? Kill him?”
She looked at Serge and knew that was exactly the thought that was crossing his mind.
“Jesus,” she said. “He’s just a wanderer. What do you care who the hell he is? He can’t do you no trouble.”
“He’d do me less if he was dead.”
“You’re paranoid, Serge.”
Serge shook his head. “Mark me,” he said. “That son of a bitch was a biker. I could see marks on the back of his jacket where the patches were before he ripped them off.”
“You could tell that just from riding past him?”
“Yes I could. And I know all the reasons a man might rip the patch off his back.”
&
nbsp; Rose shrugged. She knew what he meant. Something about that drifter did look like he was a biker. The cut of the jacket, it looked just like a Perfecto, and his boots too. He definitely looked the type. And if there had been patches on his back, that meant he’d ridden with an MC. The only reason to remove those patches was if he’d been disowned by his club or if he was trying to hide the fact of his membership. Either one would be reason enough for Serge to pick a fight.
“Come on,” Rose said before Serge talked himself into going back for the guy, “let’s get inside.”
Serge followed her into the bar. She could hear him talking to himself behind her. “If he’d been wearing a patch,” Serge was saying, “I’d go back and get him right this second. This is my territory.”
XI
INSIDE THE BAR, ROSE WAS surprised to see that Rust Brody was still there. He’d spent the entire day sitting at the bar smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. Serge had brought the package in from the bike. Rose had her bags of clothes and cosmetics and she went back to the dressing room to put them in her locker.
“Looks like you finally got to go shopping,” Murdoch called down the hall after her.
Rose ignored him but she had to admit she was pleased with the new things. She unpacked the bags, placing the underwear neatly in her locker and the makeup and other things in the shower room.
She took off her clothes, including her underwear and looked at her body in front of the mirror. It was the same ritual she went through every evening before going on stage. It looked like Rust and Serge would be hanging around for the evening so she would have to dance, whether or not there were customers.
She thought about Rust and Serge watching her dance for another night. She knew she hated being there alone with Murdoch, it made her feel as if the world was passing her by and leaving her behind. It was as if she was missing out on her youth and all her chances of happiness. But dancing for Serge and Rust was even worse than that.
