by Naomi West
“It’s not a joke,” I say. “Are you really happy?”
“Happy,” he repeats. “That word doesn’t even come close. Happy! I can’t believe this.” He jumps to his feet, grabs me, and then lifts me up. “I’m taking you in to the bedroom.”
He lifts me over his shoulder, being careful to do it softer than he usually would. I squeal, suddenly forgetting about work, about Peter, about everything. The bedroom … He carries me through the threshold and drops me into the bed, staring down at me. I stare back at him. I want him so badly, my body is gnawing itself from the inside out with the desire, desperate for his touch. He leans down, bringing his lips to mine. I close my eyes, letting myself sink into oblivion. Tomorrow might be difficult, but tomorrow can take care of itself. I’m with the father of my child and nobody can take that away from us—
“Police! Open up!”
The front door to the apartment pounds loudly, interrupting our pleasure. Diesel pauses, tilting his head, his old cynical grin on his face as though he can’t believe what he’s hearing.
“Police!” The door pounds again. “Don’t make us ask twice!”
I stand up, hopping from foot to foot. “What do we do?” I ask. “What the hell do we do?”
“Wait, just wait.”
“Police! Police!”
Diesel clenches his fists. “You haven’t committed any crimes, Willa. You’ll be okay. But just in case, we need to get you out of here. I won’t have some fuckin’ cop interrogating you, making you feel like shit. Come on.” Without waiting for my response, he takes me into the living room, to the window and nods at the fire escape. “I want you to climb down. Wait.” He darts into the bedroom and returns with a bundle of fifties, all the while the police are banging on the door. He shoves the bundle into my hand. “Take these. Climb, now!”
“What about you?” I ask, standing at the open window.
“If I come with you, they’ll chase us. When you get to the bottom, there’ll probably be a cop there. Just tell him you’re sneaking out because your boyfriend’s wife is home or some shit. Or that you smelled gas. Anything, but don’t mention me. Go now, Willa. Don’t wait on me.”
“Police! Police!”
I stand on my tiptoes, kissing him firmly on the lips. He breathes me in and then grabs my shoulders and is about to pull me closer, but then something in him snaps and he pushes me away. “Go!”
Feeling like I don’t have a choice, I climb out of the window and make my way down the fire escape. I walk slowly, carefully, thinking of my baby. I climb down the ladder and drop down into the alleyway, still shocked by everything that’s happening. Moments ago—at least it feels like moments—Diesel and I were about to have sex. Now I’m walking out of the alleyway, a cop striding toward me.
“Miss!” he calls. “Miss, what are you doing?”
“I—” Suddenly all Diesel’s lies fade. Lying to the police isn’t my world. “I—”
He’s a young man, even younger than me, with a pink face and a button nose. His eyes move to my pants. I think he’s checking me out but then I notice he’s staring at my pocket, at the bulge of notes.
“One hundred dollars,” I whisper, hoping he doesn’t accuse me of bribery. The street is blocked with three police cars, their lights flashing. Soon they’ll bring Diesel out and maybe he’ll look at me. He won’t mean to but he’ll look at me and the cops’ll drag me away with him, dragging our baby. Or this young man’s superior will shout over to him, and he’ll bring me before him for inspection.
“One-fifty,” the young man mutters. “And you can be on your way, miss.”
I pay the cop, feeling dirty, and then make my way down the street toward the parking lot where there’s a clear view of Diesel’s apartment building. I mean to watch him being taken out, make sure they haven’t hurt him. What I don’t expect to see is Peter standing by the railing with his notepad in his hand, watching Diesel’s apartment building closely. He’s so captivated by the scene, he doesn’t even realize when I come and stand next to him. He leaps out of his skin when I tap him on the shoulder.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I snap.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he says, turning back to the apartments. “I didn’t expect this, but a reporter always has to be ready.” He tapped his pen against his notepad. “So this is your boyfriend, then? A man wanted by the police? You really are a classy lady, Willa.”
I feel like snatching the notepad from his hand, but I imagine Peter calling out to the police and trying to get me arrested, just the sort of cowardly, scumbag thing he’d do. “You followed me here,” I say. “You followed me like some sort of creep. Were you waiting in your car and trailing me down the street? What’s wrong with you, Peter?”
They bring Diesel out and push him into the backseat of the car, and then the three cop cars drive away. I watch, biting my fingernails, not knowing what to do. Diesel, arrested, and for what? Do they know about the fires, or has he done something else? I find myself resting my hand on my belly, as if asking my unborn baby what his or her father has done.
Peter nods matter-of-factly when Diesel is taken away, and then turns to me. “Wrong with me?” He laughs harshly. “Are you seriously asking me that question? You’re going to stand there and ask me that question. You, Willa, you, the whore who dressed like a fucking porn star and pranced about my apartment and wondered why I thought something was going on. You, the whore who led me on. You’re a dirty little slut.”
“I completely misjudged you, Peter,” I say, turning away from him.
He shouts something after me. I ignore him and march away, clenching my fists, thinking of Diesel in prison while our child is growing up.
I check into the first motel I find with the money Diesel gave me, lie on the springy bed, and stare up at the ceiling. I need to do something to help him, but what?
Chapter Twenty-One
Diesel
“You’ve gotta tell me why I’ve been arrested,” I say, when the weasel-looking bastard pushes me into the holding cell. “You’ve at least gotta tell me that, dammit.”
The man smashes his nightstick against the bars of the cage. “Shut your fucking mouth!” he roars. He’s one of those small men who hate men my size, I guess. There were a lot of those in the slammer, guards mainly, who’d signed up just so they could bully men who’d made them feel small in high school. “If we want to talk to you, we’ll talk to you. Otherwise, shut your cunt mouth.”
I almost laugh at the man. I’m not sure if I’ve ever been called a cunt before. But I know how the slammer works. If I laugh at him, later on tonight he and four of his buddies will find me in the dark, come at me with Tasers and sticks, and I’ll have no way of fighting back as they beat me to a pulp. I swallow, stepping back into the cell, dropping into the hard metal seat. I sit there for a long time, wringing my hands, wondering if they’ve got me on the fires or something else. When they got me for hitting my dad’s police buddy, they told me straightaway what I was arrested for. This is damn weird.
I close my eyes at some point, but I can’t sleep. I keep thinking about prison, about how I was a target for everyone in there because of my dad, and even with Grimace’s protection I still got more than my fair share of beatings. I think about the time some asshole shanked me twice in my side, blood pissing everywhere. Even when I kicked his legs from underneath him and broke his arm, I didn’t feel better.
The worst part about prison is how you’re not a person anymore. They lock you up and treat you like cattle. Move here, eat now, sleep now, do this, do that. For a man who lives with an engine growling under his ass, the open road telling him he can go anywhere he wants, it’s terrifying. I don’t know if I’ll survive prison a second time, especially since the only reason I wasn’t killed last time was Grimace. I don’t think Grimace is going to be sending me help now.
At some point I fall asleep sitting up, a skill I learned on my first run in prison. When I wake up, it’s morning
and my head is groggy. I was dreaming of Willa and my kid. We were at the park and Willa was wearing a pink dress which fluttered in the breeze, and soon the dress was fluttering so much it covered the whole park, and then the whole country, and then the whole world. At the end of the dream I was looking down at a pink-covered planet. I’ve never been much for dream interpretation. I have no idea what it means.
After a watery oatmeal breakfast, the weasel-looking cop walks in with two skinheads in tow, both of them in cuffs, both of them with racist tattoos in between their eyes. They’re smaller than me by half a foot, and I know that pisses them off. It always pisses tough men off when they see me. It’s like my height and my size are a personal challenge to them. I grit my teeth, and then spit. There’s going to be fighting as soon as the weasel has retreated.
The weasel walks away, throwing me a worried look. Maybe he isn’t the asshole he seems like he is. I reckon he knows exactly what’s going to happen, but he’s leaving me anyway. Maybe somebody is twisting his arm. One of the skinheads is wearing a white tank top and dirty jeans, his arms and chest covered in tattoos. The other is wearing a black hoodie, his neck plastered in similar tattoos. Apart from that they look almost identical.
They sit down on the opposite end of the cell, whispering together. And then Hoodie grumbles, “Tough guy over there.”
His friend laughs. “Yeah, real tough man.”
I sigh inwardly. I’ve gotta respond. If I don’t, word might get around that I’m a pussy. That’s how prison works.
“The fuck, you say?”
I stand up to my full height, staring the men down. The one in the tank top looks a tiny bit worried, but Hoodie speaks for the both of them. “Sit down, faggot, before you make me stand up.”
“Stand up,” I say. “Go ahead.”
It all happens predictably. What these men don’t know is that I’ve fought bastards like them countless times. Hoodie charges at me, aiming at my face with a clumsy right hook. I step back, catch his wrist, and snap it as hard as I can. His wrist and his hand go limp and he screams like a little girl. By the time the other one is on me, I’m free to throw some punches of my own. I knock him twice in the belly, not too hard, just enough to send him sprawling to the floor.
The cell door buzzes as it opens. I get ready for the mace, and the sticks, and the cattle feeling. I wish I was back in bed with Willa. I can hardly believe I’m not in bed with Willa. I’m going to have a child, and now this.
But they don’t go in on me. Instead, Weasel grabs me by the arms and hisses in my ear, “Orders from the top. We’re moving you.”
“Moving me?” I say, as he slaps cuffs on me. “Moving me where?”
I’ve been in the system before, and this isn’t standard procedure. Chino, I think. Could it be fucking Chino? Or Grimace? Whoever it is, I have no choice. Weasel has a gun and a man with a gun can be as short as he likes.
Soon I’m sitting in a prison van, nearly empty apart from me, the driver, Weasel and another cop. The sun glares through the glass.
“Where are we going?” I call down the bus. “You been paid off by someone, is that it?”
Weasel’s face winces. Paid off by someone, then. But who? Grimace means I’m saved. Chino means I’m dead.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Willa
I’m not sure what else to do so I go into work. My plan is to ask somebody for advice. It would have been Brittany or Peter, but both of them are out of the window. Maybe I’ll ask the head of the station, Sofia Silva. Rumor has it she’s a conscientious, empathetic person, but that’s only the impression of her I’ve heard on the grapevine. And anyway, it might seem crazy for an intern to charge up to the head of the station for that kind of advice. I even search for the address of the Skull Rider clubhouse on the internet. One of their members has left it on a forum post to a pledge, so I manage to get it that way. Maybe the leader, Grimace, can help. Somebody has to.
But I don’t get a chance to ask anybody. As soon as I get into the office, Peter’s head emerges from his door and he waves me over. “Willa!” he calls, his voice loud, causing several people to stare at him. “Will you join me in my office, please?”
I feel the eyes of everybody on our floor on me as I walk toward his office. When I get in, he leaps at the door and closes it with a slam. It’s clear from the way he stumbles back to his desk that he’s drunk, or maybe he’s on something stronger. His suit is crumpled, his tie loose and twisted to one side. Beads of sweat slide down his forehead despite the AC blasting ice-cold. He dances up and down the office, hands at his sides as if he’s afraid he’s going to fall over. Above his desk, the wall-mounted TV plays on silent.
“What have you done to me, little Willa?” he asks. “What spell have you cast on me? Did you ever consider that, when you were prancing around with your slutty legs out? Did you ever think about what effect you were having on me? Did it ever enter your slutty little mind that you might be driving a man insane? No, no, I suppose it didn’t, because that would mean you’d need to have a brain in your nut, wouldn’t it? I’m a human being, Willa. I have feelings. You can’t treat me this way.”
“Treat you what way?” I snap. “Okay, maybe moving in with you was a mistake. But here’s the truth, Peter. I don’t have to fuck you because you let me stay in your spare room.”
His mouth makes an O shape. “What?” he says, anger rising in his voice. “You were sending me a clear signal by taking that room. We both know it.”
“No,” I say. “In fact, I don’t know it. I know no such thing. And to be honest, I haven’t really got the time for this. My world is falling apart and the last thing I need is you making it worse.”
He dance-stumbles over to me. I step back out of his reach. He giggles, a high-pitched, squeaky noise which sounds strange coming from a man. “You’re going to give me what you have on this Skull Rider business, right now. I want his name, his crimes, his birthplace, his social security, if you have it. I want everything, Willa. You won’t mess me around anymore.”
“You’re drunk or worse,” I tell him. “I’m leaving.”
He leaps to the door, blocking my way, and then paws clumsily for my legs. I slap his hand away. “Ow!” he yelps. “Don’t be like that. I don’t give a shit if you’re knocked up. I know you’re a freaky slut if you’re hooking up with a biker. I can show you a good time.” His eyes are rolling back in his head. He doesn’t even seem aware of what he’s saying.
“Move out of the way,” I say, struggling to contain my anger.
“Move out of your way? And why should I do that? So you can lead me on again? Do you know what, Willa? I’ve really had enough of—”
I turn away from him, throwing my hands up, afraid that if I keep looking at him I’ll slap him across the face. “Shut the fuck up!” I growl. “Just shut …”
I trail off when I look at the TV screen. The words Breaking News cover the bottom half of the screen, with the subtitle: Prison Van Crash, Gun Fight in Progress. Shaky cellphone footage shows a prison van smashing into the wall of a house, and then five men advancing on the bus. Just before the footage cuts out, I catch Diesel’s face, pressed against the glass. The footage fades to a live helicopter feed. Peter is still droning on in the background but I barely hear him. I find the TV remote on the desk and turn up the volume.
“… appears a standoff between the gunman is taking place in several residences, with police en-route.”
I turn around. Peter is still blocking the door. I march over to him, staring at him with dagger eyes. “Get out of my way this instant. Right now.”
“You can’t speak to me like that!” he proclaims.
I lean forward, staring right into his face. “Listen to me, you drunk asshole. If you don’t get out of my way, you’re going to eat your balls off a plate.”
He laughs, but slides aside. I barge from the office and go straight to Brittany’s desk. Whispering fiercely, I ask her: “Can I borrow your car?”
&n
bsp; “The Princess?” That’s right, I remind myself. I shouldn’t forget her name. She tips her head. “Why on earth would I let you borrow my baby?”
“Listen to me.” I know my voice is frantic but I can’t stop it. They might have killed him, and I am in no doubt of who they are. Chino’s men, ambushing the prison transport, intent on killing the man who’s been burning down their boss’s buildings. “The man I love more than anything is about to die, and your car can save him.”
She doesn’t look persuaded by that in the least. I reach into my pocket and take out the fifties, counting them onto her desk. “Here’s five hundred dollars,” I say. “Just to borrow it for a couple of hours. If anything happens to it, you can claim I stole it.”
Brittany’s eyes linger on the money. “You are stealing it,” she says, rolling up the bills and hiding them in her bra. She drops her keys onto the desk.
