by Nikki Pink
I squirmed around him and he didn’t bother to try and stop me further. I breathed in sharply. Blinking my eyes rapidly, urging them to adjust more quickly, I tried to make out the shape on the bed. It was a corpse. The corpse of a long-haired youth, and there was something wrong with his mouth. I blinked again. Was it him? Was it Red?
I sighed with misplaced relief when I saw that it wasn’t him, glad it wasn’t the man I’d been with just two nights before. My feeling of guilt was briefly lifted, until it settled back down on me again with double the weight as I realized this guy’s death was just as much on me as if it had been Red. In the unfortunate man’s mouth a Do Not Disturb sign had been shoved between his teeth.
Bottle turned to look at me, shaking his head. “You weren’t wrong about him being a psycho.”
“Well, what do you know.”
Bottle and I turned to Gauge, curious as to what he’d found. He was standing over the head of the bed, peering at the pillow intently. He slowly extended a leather gloved hand and picked something up, holding it before his eyes. I couldn’t make out what he’d found in the dim light.
“What?” asked Bottle.
“Hair.”
“So?”
“Red hair.”
Bottle sucked in air through pursed lips. “From our boy?”
I watched Gauge nod. “That’d be my guess. Looks like he’s trying to set Red up.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Fucked if I know,” said T-Bone.
“Just to fuck us over? For helping you?” asked Bottle.
I considered it. It made sense, somewhat.
Gauge growled. “Or maybe it was to slow us down. Maybe he knew we’d have to deal with this shit and he could put some distance between us. He couldn’t have left long before us. Maybe we could have caught him out on the highway somewhere.”
“Maybe we still can?” I asked, my voice hopeful even though I wasn’t really.
Gauge and Bottle shook their heads, and my driver of the day said “Maybe if we’d been a little quicker. He’s probably long gone. And now we’ve got to find every last fucking hair of Red’s.” He let out a sigh.
T-Bone cleared his throat. “Not necessarily.”
Gauge laughed. Bottle and I looked from one to the other.
T-Bone looked at Bottle, “Come on, you should be used to it by now.”
Bottle sighed. “Fuck. Again?”
Gauge nodded. “It’s the only way to be sure. There’s no way in hell we’re going to find every last hair that fucker planted in here.”
I looked at them quizzically. “What are you all talking about?”
Bottle looked at me. “Gauge wants to burn the place down. Fire. Again.” The acting vice president turned to his older companion. “Gauge, I think we’re going to have to have a chat about all these fires. The other month? Yesterday? Now?”
Gauge gave out a low chuckle. “Yesterday wasn’t my fault. That one’s on her.” He gestured at me with his head.
“Hey! I didn’t burn down my own fuckin’ house. Are you nuts?”
Gauge chuckled again. “You, your ex. Wasn’t me, anyway.”
I muttered and stalked back outside into the harsh sunlight. “What next?” I asked Bottle after he’d followed me into the dusty parking lot.
“Let’s get something to eat, and you can finish telling me about this asshole. Can you think of anything else I can tell the boys right now? Anywhere he might be?”
T-Bone and Gauge passed us and headed back toward the office as I thought for a moment. Then something struck me. Of course. Why didn’t I think of it before? “Like I said, he’s obsessed with his fucking health. Back in high school he read some shit about pesticides in food. Since then, he’s only eaten organic.”
Bottle looked at me with a raised chin. “What the fuck is organic? Some kind of cereal?”
I couldn’t contain the laugh that burst out in a sudden yelp, before I rushed to cover my mouth with my hands, and pretended my sudden expulsion was due to a cough rather than surprised mirth. I re-composed myself. “No, like healthy food. They grow it without chemicals or shit. Maybe there’s an organic store, or a hippie cafe or something in town? You might find him there picking up supplies.”
I saw him thinking for a moment. He looked more a greasy cheeseburger, fries and beer kind of guy than toasted whole-grain organic bagels and muesli. This pleased me. As far as I was concerned the further from Dewey in all aspects the better.
“I’ll tell Twist to pass the word around, see what he turns up. Come on. Let’s get something to eat.” He looked back inside the wrecked motel room shaking his head. “It’s about to get real barbecuey around here.”
I caught his eye. “Tell him I’m sorry about his friend, about Tony, okay?”
He raised his eyebrows a moment with a questioning look, before comprehension appeared on his face. He gave a nod. I guess he’d forgotten that the dead clerk was a friend of Twist’s.
We roared away from the dusty old motel, the last visitors it would ever have. Soon, when I glanced over my shoulder, a plume of gray-black smoke was pouring up into the otherwise clear blue sky, the ashy trails reaching higher than I could see.
Fuck you, Dewey. Fuck you.
I turned my head back forward and leaned it on Bottle’s broad back, my forehead pressed against the soft leather which offered scents of oil, smoke, blood, whisky and sweat; the smells of the biker life.
The corners of my eyes were moist, maybe from the whipping wind, maybe from the thought that we were on the trail of my captor, my tormentor, my enemy for life, my ex.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Dewey
He sat in the dust peering through his binoculars, frowning. What were those men doing?
“No, no, no. Don’t do that.”
Dewey muttered to himself. They were ruining it. He’d planted that hair to frame Red, and now the bastards were going to burn the place down.
He could see the fuckers. Dumbasses. What was wrong with them? Why did they think it was acceptable to do shit like that? Did they think they could just go around making fires anywhere they wanted?
Of course he had been forced to make a little fire yesterday, but that was completely different. He wasn’t a hulking moron like the lardass on the customized wideboy, or the older shaven haired ex-con looking fool.
Why was Karen still following them around. Maybe they were getting her hooked on drugs or something. He clenched his fists at the thought. Would they stoop that low, to do that to his poor innocent girl?
Well, if they would burn down a motel, they probably wouldn’t hesitate at drugging a beautiful young woman.
He shuddered. Maybe they intended to use her. Put her to work.
“No, no, no.”
A tear leaked from the corner of an eye. That couldn’t happen to her, not to his girl. No way.
Out of nowhere a glimmer of an idea begin to appear. He turned it over in his mind. He had it!
“Of course!” Why hadn’t he thought of it sooner? It was so obvious.
Burning down a motel like that, with a body inside, would make them look even more suspicious than just having a few red hairs lying around.
Dewey excitedly grabbed his camera out of his bag. He’d film it all! Those idiots couldn’t look more guilty if they tried. Screw the DNA evidence from the hair, this was some video proof.
He set the camera up to record as the two bigger bikers sloshed gasoline around. Just then his little speaker crackled. He grabbed it and ran, holding it up to his ear as he did so. He didn’t want its sound to appear on the video recording when he handed it over to the cops later.
As he listened the grin on his face grew broad. He heard Karen explaining how he looked after his body (she knew him so well!), and liked to eat healthy.
He knew what to do now. When he was done here it’d be time to head in to town. The next step of his plan had just been revealed to him.
“I love you, Karen” he said fo
ndly. He shook his head sadly at the fact that he could hear her, but she couldn’t hear him.
A tear dropped down to the ground as the distant rumbling of motorcycles rolled toward him. The motel was burning now and the bikers were on their way.
Fools.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Karen
The food in the Hamilton Family diner was good, but it didn’t serve beer unfortunately. Though on second thoughts, maybe it was for the best. We sat in a booth across from each other, him with a triple-cheese-double-bacon-burger, and me making do with a mere double-double. After the hellish couple of days I’d had it was the first time I’d been able to relax.
I watched as Bottle finished demolishing his burger, enjoying seeing the simple pleasure on his face that the greasy burger gave him. He had the appearance of a simple man - a common criminal if truth be told, what with his motorcycle gang attire and teardrop tattoo on his lightly-lined face.
But there was more to him than that. He was a hard man, sure. He had the look of a killer. But there was more to him underneath, I could tell he wasn’t just a criminal (are any of us ever just anything?), his eyes spoke to me of someone who’d loved and lost, someone who could show kindness and care for those important to him, and I could see intelligence underneath - he was not a simple dumb biker, that’s for sure.
He looked like he was about to tell me something when his cell phone - an old flip model - buzzed on the table in front of him. I guessed he kept it on vibrate on the motorcycle; there was no way he was hearing a ring tone over that noise.
My eyes bulged when he answered the phone with “¿Bueno?”, and began to speak in rapid fire Spanish. I let my eyes run over him again, he didn’t look Mexican, but it sure seemed like he spoke it. I couldn’t catch any of it, but I could tell from the way he let out the occasional laugh and teasing tone that he was speaking fluently. If I’d only heard him without being allowed to use my eyes I would never have taken him for a regular old European-American.
He hung up the phone and gave me a raised eyebrow look. “Sorry. Work shit.”
“No problem. You speak Spanish huh?”
Bottle nodded. “Yep. So, you want to tell me more about this asshole? You didn’t get to finish yesterday.”
I sighed and wrapped my hands around the cool water glass in front of me. I guess he wasn’t in the mood to chat about himself. I took a sip of the water.
He looked at me and cocked his head slightly, before glancing furtively over his shoulder. With the coast clear, he tapped me on my leg under the table to get my attention. I reached a cold hand down with some curiosity, I was guessing he wasn’t just trying to hold my hand. I moved my hand around, searching for whatever he was offering me, and a moment later it was pressed into my hand.
I pulled it to my lap, so it was still hidden by the table, and gave a little laugh. It was a flask.
“I know it’s tough talking about him. Maybe that’ll help a little. Anything you can tell me might be able to help.”
I gave a smile and a nod, and our eyes caught each other. For a moment a spark of something that seemed strangely akin to happiness flew between our gazes. I was happy at his gesture, he was happy at my happiness, and then in turn I was strangely thrilled to see that he was pleased with my happiness. It was a strange loop, but it buoyed my spirits more than anything else had that day.
I took a furtive sip of the burning fluid, and began to carry on telling Bottle about my hated past.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Karen
For a brief time, I was happy. It was thrilling - he was my first serious boyfriend, and I was his first girlfriend. Everything was new to us, and it was magical. The dates, the holding hands, the sweet secret kisses at school and the longer ones in the dark of the movie theater. I was happy. For a while, anyway. I didn’t notice the distance between me and Katie widening, in fact I didn’t notice much of anything those first couple of months.
You know what made it all worse? Not at the time, but later? It was the fact that our parents were so pleased. We were constantly surrounded by people saying it was like a fairy tale, that we were a golden couple, that the fact we lived next door to each other was wonderful and that everything was just perfect. In towns like that, there’s always one couple in high school that you just know are going to get married and settle down together. We were that couple. Even after just a couple of months of dating it was just assumed.
People - parents, friends, hell even clerks in the store and teachers at school would always say When you guys go to college, or When you guys buy a house, or When you guys have kids. It was always assumed that we would be together forever. No one ever asked my opinion.
Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was cute, and in those early months I loved it. But later on? When I knew what he was really like? Then it became a torture to me. I became a prisoner in a cell created by everyone else’s expectations. My destiny was set by Mrs. Jennings in English class, by Ruby the cashier in Target, by Mom, by Dad, by Dewey.
The first sign, I guess, was the hair.
“Hey babe, I booked you an appointment at Trudeau’s,” he’d said to me one Saturday morning as he ate toast in our kitchen.
“Wow! Isn’t that fantastic, Karen?” Mom had said.
I beamed. Trudeau’s was the expensive hair salon in town. I’d never been there myself, in fact I don’t think even Mom had. It was a big deal.
“Thank you! How come?” I’d asked.
He wiped a crumb from the corner of his mouth. “Why not? You’re my princess and you deserve it.”
I giggled and just about melted inside. “Thank you!” I gave him a kiss on the cheek. Mom gave me a smile, a shake of the head and a look that said you don’t know how lucky you are. And at that time, I thought she was right.
While we were on our way there I was nervously thinking about what I would ask them to do. I wasn’t sure if I even had the right vocabulary for a place like that; I even feared they might look down on me and kick me out for being a yokel!
But I needn’t have feared, well, not about that anyway. Dewey took care of it. When we entered I was sat down while he went and spoke to the hairdressers and stylists. “Don’t worry about a thing, babe.”
So it turns out, I didn’t get a say in the matter at all. My dark hair, which I’d always loved, was bleached and dyed and cut and blow dried and when they were done I was speechless. I stared into the mirror, not recognizing the girl in front of me at all. I was now a blond.
I didn’t dislike the idea of being blond. But I would have liked to have a say in the matter, you know? I should have said something then, I should have told him that he needed to speak to me about things like that before doing them, or arranging them, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.
“You look a-ma-zing, love,” he told me, his eyes shining with excitement.
I’d smiled, trying to share his enthusiasm, not wanting to disappoint him. I never wanted to disappoint him back then. “Thank you. I can’t believe it! Is this really me?” I asked, holding a tendril of blond in front of my eyes.
He nodded. “It’s you. It’s the new you. It’s my you.”
My you? What the fuck did that even mean?
We went to a movie after, and he couldn’t stop stroking my hair and running his fingers through it. He seemed so goddamn pleased with it. I didn’t realize it then, but this was the first step in his project. His plan to re-create me into exactly what he wanted me to be.
The next thing was something I didn’t realize for the longest time. Not until years later. It was a small thing, but it was important to him. Nail polish.
As a tween I’d loved my nail polishes. I didn’t care about expensive ones, I cared about having lots of them, in every color you could think of. Sometimes I’d have rainbow fingers, as Katie and I had called them, with every finger and toe painted a different shade. As I’d gotten older I still had quite a variety of them, until Dewey and I became serious, that is.
> The bottles had started disappearing. First the less common colors, which he really disliked, like the green and the blue and the brown, then the others too. It wasn’t all at once, it happened over the course of weeks or maybe even months.
One weekend, he surprised me with a small gift, and when I unwrapped it I gave him a kiss of thanks, though I wasn’t all that thrilled. It was a bright red nail polish. Hooker red, I’d thought, though I didn’t say it.
“Thanks babe!” I told him, before going to place it on my vanity. As usual, I caught myself staring at my reflection for a moment when my eye caught the mirror, still not used to my blond hair.
I put it down with the rest of my depleted stockpile of nail polish. I frowned for a moment. It seemed all I had left these days were different shades of red.
“Will you put it on, for me?” he asked.
“Sure, I’ll do it tonight,” I said. I thought I’d do it in front of the television with Mom.
“No, now. Please? I want to see it.”
I gave him a quizzical look. “Really?”
He grinned and nodded.
I shrugged my shoulders. If that’s how he wanted to spend his afternoon then it was fine for me. I would have thought it boring, but apparently he didn’t.
I grabbed my makeup bag and cotton balls. He sat on a chair and watched me as I removed the old polish, and applied the new, his, to my fingers and toes. His expression was rapt the whole time, he didn’t seem to get bored at all.
When I was finished he stood up and came over to me. “Come here, babe.” I stood up and he wrapped his arms around me. I did the same, though keeping my fingers extended as they were still drying.
His arms were strong, and his embrace was tight, almost too tight. He kissed me hard on the lips. “Thank you. I love you, babe.”
“I love you too,” I whispered, though even then I wasn’t sure.
After that I didn’t wear a different nail polish again. Every time it began to grow out or get chipped he noticed. “You need to do your nails babe. Use the one I got you, please?” he would ask. And I would dutifully comply.
