Quills and Daggers - A Second Chance at Love Romance: The Collective - Season 1, Episode 5

by Chris Genovese

  “This ain’t the place for this shit,” Red said from behind me at the bar. “I think you and your dago friends better leave.”

  “Or what?” Davey asked.

  “Or maybe we won’t let ya,” Red replied. “You might wanna look around, guido. Your kind and ours don’t mix well.”

  Davey’s girlfriend tugged on his arm.

  “Baby, come on,” she said. “Let’s just go. This is stupid.”

  “Bitch,” Davey said. “Get off my arm and shut the fuck up. Let me handle my business.”

  Now, I’m a fairly mellow guy. I’ve learned to respect others and give them time to respect you. I’ve learned to back off long enough to give yourself time to breathe and think about your actions before you commit to them. But hearing a man call a woman a bitch and treat her like shit in front of a crowd of people, now that ain’t right.

  As I stepped forward, it all seemed to happen in slow motion. Davey’s girlfriend pulled hard on his arm in a final attempt to drag him away. He got fed up and yanked her forward and then swatted her away, slapping her jaw with the maneuver. The girl fell to the floor.

  And I pounced.

  My left hand shot up and caught him in the neck. I didn’t strike him hard enough to crush his larynx but I hit him firmly enough that he’d feel it the next couple of days. He immediately went to clutch his throat and fight for breath, but my knee wouldn’t give him the chance. I leapt upward and smashed my kneecap into his stomach. As he hunched forward in pain, I slammed my elbow down against the corner of his eye, and Davey went out like a light. His body hit the floor before anyone else could figure out what had happened.

  His Spanish friend pulled out a knife and swung it at me but one of Red’s biker buddies grabbed his arm, picked the guy up in the air, and slammed him down onto a table. The knife fell free and clattered against the floor. A second biker punched him in the face. The chubby guy reached to his belt and had his hand on his 9mm pistol grip when Red’s friends surrounded him. He was smart enough to think better of it and raised his hands into the air.

  I stepped over Davey’s crumpled up body and offered a hand to the pretty girl on the floor. Her face was already starting to bruise. She accepted my hand and I helped her stand.

  “What’s your name?” I asked her.

  “Valerie,” she said.

  “This isn’t the guy for you,” I warned her. “You’re too pretty to be tagging along with these losers.”

  “Where’d you meet these pricks?” Red asked from his place, still behind the bar.

  “Customers,” I said, pointing down at Davey. “An unhappy one.”

  “Whatever you say, hoss,” he replied.

  He turned his attention to Davey’s friends.

  “I don’t like your kind,” he said. “Drag your friend outta here before I get some of these boys in the bar to drag you all out.”

  “Alright,” the chubby man said. “Just chill. We’ll leave.”

  “You okay, sweetheart?” Red asked Valerie.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “He hits like a girl.”

  Half the bar erupted in laughter. I hadn’t even realized so many people were watching. I knew if I’d lost the fight enough of them would have jumped in to make sure Davey didn’t leave on his two feet. But I knew I wouldn’t lose the fight. I trusted my skills.

  “You need a job?” Red asked. “Seems I’m down a girl.”

  “Here?” Valerie replied.

  Red looked at me and then back at the girl, wondering if he’d made a mistake. Was she really that stupid?

  “Umm,” she said. “I don’t know.”

  She looked at me as if looking for assurance. Like she needed my blessing.

  “Red’ll take care of you,” I said. “Won’t let you hook up with any assholes like this guy.”

  I kicked Davey’s leg. Valerie smiled.

  “Okay,” she said.

  Red pulled Valerie to the side to discuss the details while Davey’s friends dragged him out to the street. As he spoke to her, I noticed she kept looking my way, and when she saw that I’d noticed, she smiled. It had turned into one hell of a night. First, seeing Nikki again, and then meeting the brunette bombshell who’d apparently be serving me beers from now on.

  Chapter 3 - Nikki

  Ivory. The name was as foreign to me as the man I’d met in the tattoo parlor. James, the boy I once knew, was shy and fumbled his words. He’d always been so concerned about impressing me and about saying the right things all the time that he’d missed every sign I’d given him. I’d fallen in love with him that last summer. We were only kids but I’d spent my whole life not getting what I wanted and finally it seemed something I desired was within reach. All I’d wanted back then was a kiss. I never got one.

  This new guy, this Ivory as he called himself, had apparently gone to prison and had returned a real man. Two days had passed since I’d visited his shop. I’d considered popping in for a visit but instead opted to call and ask when he’d have space for me. He said he already had my booth set up and that I didn’t need to worry about equipment. He had plenty of extra stuff he could loan me. As much as I wanted him to treat me like any other person who might rent a space in his shop, I can’t deny the special treatment was sweet. This was business though. James and I could never be together. That ship was way out of port. Our past was too thick with bad memories, too heavy, like a stone soup with no extra broth. We could, however, be friends. A friend was something I needed, but true friends talk about their feelings, about their past, and neither of us were likely to do that.

  Besides, I’d seen the way he’d stared at the woman who’d entered with her gang banger friends. James wasn’t immune to the natural ways of men. No, his eyeballs had drifted to her tits the same way Kevin’s had which was a lot like the way Chunk’s had when he’d entered the room. Chunk had been happy to see me, which was nice considering he was good friends with my ex. I’d been worried he’d want nothing to do with me. Or that maybe my ex had gossiped about our time together.

  At what point is one considered a whore?

  I’ve already mentioned my rocky past and my seemingly infinite number of boyfriends. Searching for happiness is a hell of a voyage. Much like a cock pirate, I snatched up the booty, and fled late in the night.

  God, that sounds horrible.

  Let me rephrase that. It’s not that I was in search of a man well-versed in the sexual arts, it’s just that I usually only got that far into the relationship before something he did freaked me out and I bailed. Keeping a backpack stuffed with life’s essentials was always necessary. A few changes of clothes, some extra cash, and the one special item I’d had since I was young, an old ragdoll. This was the stuff I took with me when I left.

  I’d leave James too, eventually, just like I left Mrs. Rebecca’s house when we were kids. Every time someone got too close to me, I got anxious, nervous, and in some strange way…disgusted. Not disgusted with the other person, but disgusted with myself, like I didn’t deserve their affection. I could only give short hugs and you’d never find me spooning. In bed, I was most likely to get up first and shower. I’d sleep fully dressed and separate from whomever I’d fucked. Skin on skin made me feel vulnerable when not in the heat of passion. For this reason, I knew I’d never let myself get close enough to James. Plus, I didn’t fuck like normal girls. It had been the cause of many breakups and was always a struggle for me. I was different.

  The night before I returned to the Motor Quill tattoo parlor, I had to work a night shift at Swift Fleet, a private ambulance provider started because of big city traffic and a lack of regular hospital emergency transport. My job was anything but consistent. One night might find me watching reality TV while sitting alone at a dispatch desk, waiting for calls, while the next I’d be bogged down with call after call, jotting down the specifics for emergency situations and talking teams of responders through the details. The constant highs and lows were stressful as hell.

  This night
turned out to be one of the slow nights. It seemed Wednesday was always the slowest. Something about the middle of the week was unappealing to heart conditions and other ailments. My busiest nights were always Thursday and Sunday, when, as good as I could guess, people wanted to be sick or suffer an injury just to get a longer weekend. Or it was all coincidence. Who knows? But this Wednesday was dead.

  I was alone, with the lights dimmed, fighting off the urge to sleep while watching some kind of undercover “caught you cheating” show. The lights on the console in front of me reminded me of Christmas with the red and yellow and orange and green illuminated buttons. Too bad I didn’t have a minty candy cane to stick in my coffee. All of our responders were out in the garage or next door in the on-call quarters, probably sleeping or jerking off to Tumblr videos, when the phone rang.

  “Here we go,” I said aloud as I hit the green button and spoke into my headset. “Swift Fleet response, what’s the nature of your emergency?”

  Nothing.

  “Swift Fleet response. Hello?”

  Silence.

  “Hello? If you can hear me, I am unable to hear you. I’m going to hang up now.”

  The sound of someone clearing his or her throat filled both my ears. It was a phlegm filled cough of sorts that ended in what sounded like a laugh. A deep grumble that got slightly higher in pitch at the end, almost like an old man giggling. Then the line went dead.

  “Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?” I said into the headset microphone hovering in front of my lips.

  The dial tone came on loud and jolted me in my seat. I yanked off my headset and threw it down on the counter.

  “Jesus,” I said.

  The room was quiet. Too quiet. If someone had been in the room with me, the call probably wouldn’t have spooked me like it did. I knew it was probably nothing more than an old man who’d accidentally hit his emergency button. Each paid customer had a keychain equipped with one, kind of like the old “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” commercials. Accidental calls happened all the time.

  The phone rang again. As if picking up a deadly snake and hoping it wouldn’t bite, I lifted my headset gingerly off the counter and put it back on. The green light blinked on the console and I hesitated answering it, which was a serious violation of company policy. During training it was hammered into us that a few seconds late on a call could mean the difference between a heart attack or aneurism victim leaving their loved ones behind and only having a bad night.

  The phone continued to ring. Finally, I reached out and slapped the button.

  “Swift Fleet response, what’s the…what’s the…the nature of your emergency?”

  Silence.

  “Swift Fleet…” I repeated.

  “Please, I think I’ve broken a rib or something,” came the voice of an older woman.

  The relief I felt at the normalcy of the call was fucked up considering a woman was in great pain and thought she’d cracked a rib. Still, I was happy to hear her voice. I sent a responder to her house and she was taken to the nearest hospital where she lived and had, in fact, broken a rib when she’d slipped on a wet spot in the kitchen and hit her dinette table on the way down to the floor. The night went on like that, a few regular calls followed by only the hushed tone of the wall-mounted TV.

  At a quarter to four in the morning, fifteen minutes before my shift was due to end, the phone rang again. I rolled my eyes only because I dreaded receiving one of those calls that would keep me in my seat long after my shift ended. I once had to talk to a suicidal customer for over an hour, right at the end of my shift. I hit the button and before I could even state the call opening, I heard the sound of laughter. This wasn’t normal laughter. It wasn’t a group of party kids pranking someone or drunken buddies with a broke down car on the side of the road. No, this was altogether different.

  “Swift Fleet…”

  The laughter continued. It was strange sounding as if coming through some sort of electronic device, but raspy at the same time, like the device might be filled with rust and soot that was spilling out with each blast of hysterics.

  “Hello?” I said.

  The laughter turned to a whistle. The person on the other end was whistling a tune. For a second, I couldn’t put my finger on it, but then I did. Ring around the Rosy.

  Ring around the rosy. Pocket full of posies. Ashes…ashes…we all fall down.

  As the caller reached the end of the tune, he dragged the final note on until it died in volume and enthusiasm and dropped off. Anger boiled inside of me. This was a mean prank and I had no time to deal with these school-age assholes this early in the morning.

  “Thanks for calling,” I said. “I’m going to hang up now.”

  “D…d…don’t do that, please,” came the raspy voice of what sounded like an older gentleman.

  “What’s the nature of your emergency?” I asked. “If there is one. I don’t have time for games.”

  “Deathhhhhhh.”

  The caller held onto the “d” at the beginning of the word as if concentrating hard and forcing the it out of his mouth. The end of the word hissed.

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s s…so n…nice to hear you,” he said.

  “Very funny. Goodbye.”

  I hit the hang up button and rolled back in my chair. Vinnie, the overweight and acne pocked dayshift dispatcher showed up early and I couldn’t throw my headset off quickly enough. Vinnie set a container of donut holes down on the counter and blew into the slit at the top of his coffee lid. His glasses dangled at the end of his nose and he didn’t say a word. He could tell something was up. I stood and shoved my hands into my jeans pockets.

  “That…” I started, having to yank my right hand out of my pocket so I could point at the headset. “That wasn’t cool.”

  “What wasn’t cool?” he asked with so little concern that it bothered me.

  “Someone’s been fucking with me,” I said. “Calling me and laughing and saying crazy shit.”

  “Well, if they call back, I’ll be sure to tell them you’re busy and will be available again tomorrow night,” he said with a grin.

  “That’s not funny,” I said.

  “I’m sure it was only a prank call,” he replied.

  “No,” I said. “This was weird. I think he called earlier in the night and then just now. I mean who does something like that at four o’clock in the morning? Who’s even awake this early?”

  “Newspaper delivery boys?” he joked.

  My look must have told him he’d said enough because he set his coffee down and threw his hands up in defense.

  “They get up really early,” he said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  As I left work that morning, and made my way home, I was afraid. That tune. I’d heard it before, not since I was a kid, but I’d heard it. And I’d heard stuttering. My mind drifted to the one person I knew who stuttered like that and the one person who tried to cover it up with a whistle. I shrugged off the thought. It couldn’t be. He’d have no reason to mess with me like that. We’d always been friends. Yet, the nagging thought wouldn’t stop gnawing away at me. I didn’t go to sleep that morning until the sun came up.

  Chapter 4 - Ivory

  The night before Nikki came back to the shop, I visited Red’s. I went in for a beer but ended up staying for several hours, chatting with the old man himself while keeping my eyes glued to the scorching hot new waitress they’d hired. Since my run in with her ex-boyfriend, I hadn’t been able to get her off my mind. Sure, she was younger than me, but not cradle-robbing young. I was thirty-two to her…maybe twenty-six…or twenty-seven? I was the worst at nailing down a woman’s age. I’d once slept with a grandmother I’d sworn was in her mid-twenties. Even almost slept with a seventeen year old whom I’d met at a bar. I’m not proud of the fact.

  What? I met her at a fucking bar. She shouldn’t have even been in there unless she was at least twenty-one. I would have fucked her too if her mom hadn’t called her
cell phone right in the middle of our make-out session. Nothing gives away a woman’s age like the way she speaks to her parents. Her teenage voice squeaked out at an alarming rate, much faster paced and at a higher tone than the sultry seductive voice she’d used in the bar.

  My point is…I suck at gauging ages. Valerie could have been anywhere from age eighteen to forty.

  The shy girl who’d entered my tattoo parlor that night seemed to have shed her sheep’s wool. Now, she was a sexy siren wearing short shorts and a button up shirt tied in a knot at mid-stomach, showing off that bellybutton ring and her cleavage at the same time.

  Valerie flashed me a flirtatious smile each time she passed until I finally reached out and gently grabbed her wrist her next time around. I gestured for her to sit next to me and she nervously looked around to see if Red was watching. Her boss was definitely intimidating but I knew if he saw her talking to me, he wouldn’t bother her. He liked me.

  “Sit for a second,” I said. “Please?”

  She sat down next to me and focused on the bar, maybe shy, maybe intimidated by me, or maybe not interested in me at all. I’ve been told that I’m a bit intense to anyone who doesn’t know me. The tattoos all down my arms and legs and on one side of my neck tend to make people think I’m going to be a prick. I’d like to think I’m a fairly mild-mannered guy.

  “How are you holding up?” I asked. “You okay?”

  “I’m good,” she said, still not looking at me.

  “That’s good,” I said. “That guy from the other night hasn’t messed with you?”

  “He came to my house yesterday, saying he was sorry, that he wanted to take care of me and Melody, but…I’d been wanting to leave him for a long time and thanks to you, I did.”

  “Melody?” I asked.

  “My daughter,” she said. “She’s six years old and she’s everything to me.”

  Well that’s a plot twist.

  “Your daughter,” I said, turning it over in my head. “Melody. That’s cool. She must be adorable if she looks anything like her mama.”