by M. O’Keefe
“Agree to the terms, Simon,” I said, I’d lost the fight to keep my friends safe. We were all drowning together, tied to a killer named Bates. Jesus, the lights were suddenly getting brighter in here.
“I agree to the terms,” Simon said.
And it was done. Our futures sealed.
Bates walked out, the door clicking shut behind him. It was weird…eerie how it felt like we’d dreamed him.
“Simon,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Fuck off with that. We got bigger problems.”
Bigger problems and I caused them all.
Simon crept to the door and looked out the window.
“No one’s coming,” Simon said.
“We gotta get…out,” I panted. Simon helped me to my feet and we lurched our way out of the police station. Waiting, every step, for someone to stop us.
But we pushed open the door and the sea salt air of San Francisco and the roar of traffic in the outside world felt like a goddamned hug.
“Let’s get you to the hospital,” Simon said.
“You…you don’t have to come…with…me,” I said.
“Yeah, because you can do it on your own?” he asked.
I couldn’t. But Simon didn’t make me say it. He just got me to the hospital.
I had two broken ribs. A broken nose and a concussion.
The hospital called the police and about three hours after getting there, my parole officer showed up. The minute he left the room to make some calls, we got the fuck out of there.
It was Simon’s idea to pocket as many samples of high-level oxy as we could shove in our pockets, which he promptly sold on the street so we could rent a room in a shitty hotel in the heart of the Tenderloin.
We lived low to the ground. Under the radar of cops and the social workers who would be looking for us. The newspaper said that the pastor died of a heart attack. His wife was moved to a mental hospital. The congregation disbanded.
Simon couldn’t claim the check for college he’d been counting on because he ran away. To get it he’d have had to go back into the system and he had no time for that. He got his GED, applied for a shit ton of scholarships and fuck if he didn’t get a free ride to UCLA.
I got a job working construction and did my very best not to care. Like I’d used it all up in St. Joke’s. Not giving a shit was a thing I perfected.
We didn’t hear from Carissa. Not for years.
Rosa finally turned up, but it wasn’t good.
And Beth…Beth just vanished.
Until it came time to pay the debt.
Part II
5
Seven years later
Tommy
I walked into Lucy’s and held the door open for Pest, who came in behind me. Her prance was a little slower these days, so it took some time for her to get through the door, but she came, bell jangling, head up like the world was just waiting for her to walk in.
Pest was the walking embodiment of delusions of grandeur.
I’d said it a million times over the last six years she’d been with me, but she was a ridiculous fucking dog.
The bar was empty—the bar was always empty, which was why I liked this place better than any of the other pubs along my street. The gentrification of this far end of the Tenderloin had turned most of my usual spots into cappuccino bars and something called “gastropubs,” which really only sounded gross.
But Lucy’s refused to change.
I liked that about Lucy’s.
It was dark inside the way bars were supposed to be, and the bar itself managed to be both smooth and sticky. There were small dips worn out on the edge from the millions of people who had braced their elbows against the wood after a long day. Sometimes I sat there and imagine the guys who built the bridge coming here after work, just a long line of workers like me.
Too tired to make their own dinners.
The booze was purely standard rail. The taps never changed, and the burger was the best and pretty much only thing on the menu.
All of this suited me down to the dust on my boots.
Lucy herself was behind the bar, and she threw a cardboard coaster in front of me. She and her family moved here from Puerto Rico when she was a kid, and her brother was a tattoo artist—her arms were solid sleeves of green vines and pink flowers. Puerto Rican flags on the backs of both her hands.
“Usual?” she said, and I nodded, pulling my phone out of my back pocket.
The sound was off on the TV above the bar, but the news ticker told the usual story in my city; someone got stabbed. A police officer had been shot and was in the hospital in critical condition. The president was being an idiot, and some pop princess had passed out onstage during a concert.
“Is that a dog?” a blonde woman asked as she walked in from the back where the tables were. Pest, sensing attention, wagged her bushy tail.
Pest got this question a lot because of her resemblance to a squirrel. Or maybe an overgrown rat. Pest looked like a lot of things—a dog wasn’t really one of them. She had runny eyes and a snaggletooth and fur that didn’t know which way it wanted to go.
“It is,” I said as if surprised to find Pest beside my stool.
“Is that…allowed?”
“Service dog,” I said.
“For real?” she asked.
Lucy shrugged and put a pint of Guinness down in front of me. “Social anxiety,” she said. “I saw the letter from his doctor myself.”
“Go figure,” the woman said, patted Pest on the head and walked down to the end of the bar to study Lucy’s beer list.
I smiled and shook my head; welcome to The Tenderloin, where no one questioned anything too hard.
Lucy winked at me before setting down a small bowl of water for Pest. I took it off the bar and put it on the ground by my stool. Lucy was a good egg. One of the best. I should have been kinder to her when she gave me the chance. One of about seven thousand regrets I lived with. Pest got up on her feet to go sip like a lady at the bowl. As a rule, Pest had better manners than me.
“Burger?” Lucy asked, and I nodded. She turned to punch it into the old computer system. “How’s work?”
“Good,” I said, rubbing my hands together, the sounds of the calluses audible in the room. My hands were a solid mess. Rough and fucked-up. I hated working with gloves, and all the fancy lotions didn’t do much good after the fact. Such was the life of a mason, I guess.
My hands were my hands.
But the calluses covered up the old scars, which, maybe, was the point.
“What are you building these days?” she asked.
“Rich guy’s driveway.”
“Out of stone?” Lucy asked.
“Rich guy wants what rich guy wants.”
“Rich guys,” Lucy said with a shake of her head. “Plain burger for Pest?” she asked.
“Yeah, thanks.”
She went to go serve the blonde at the other end of the bar.
“Would you mind turning that up for a second?” the blonde asked, pointing to the screen. Lucy reached over and unmuted the TV. “I want to see if they’re going to give us an update on that cop that was shot.”
“Pop sensation Jada,” the television reporter said, and behind her flashed pictures of a young woman in constantly changing costumes. She was a mermaid and then a bull in a matador costume; unbelievably a whole cotton candy costume. Once she was painted to look like a cloudy blue sky. “Has finished her North American tour in what has become typical dramatic fashion. The singer, known for her sexy costumes and out-of-this-world makeup, collapsed last night halfway through her show at the Hollywood Bowl. Sources say the Internet sensation turned global sex symbol is exhausted and will be taking some time before heading to Europe.”
“Drugs,” the woman said, pointing at the TV. “Exhaustion is just code for drugs.”
I looked down at my hands and ignored the lady and her flip fucking know-it-all attitude. I didn’t come to Lucy’s for conversation.
On the bar my phone buzzed, and I turned it over to see a text from Simon.
Just landed in LA.
I felt the tension in the back of my head let go. The stress headache I’d been living with for three weeks vanished from behind my eye.
Welcome home, I texted. Everything okay?
I’m exhausted, starving, my luggage was lost and I think I have lice—so everything is great, he texted, and I smiled.
Simon was on a Pulitzer-prize-winning team of journalists who’d covered the Ebola outbreak and the Syrian refugee crisis, and now he was working on the Russian influence in European elections.
Every time he left the country, there was a solid chance he wouldn’t come back. He had enemies. Real enemies. Leaders-of-countries enemies. Enemies that didn’t just jump a guy on his way back from a bar, but put plutonium in tea.
He had assassin enemies.
But Simon was tough as fuck.
He just hadn’t known it until that night. None of us had.
Gonna sleep for a day. Dinner tomorrow night?
Sounds good.
I’ll drive up tomorrow. Later.
I put the phone back down on the bar, and Lucy smiled at me.
“Good news?” she asked. “You look lighter.”
I felt fucking lighter.
“Friend is home safe is all.”
Lucy pushed three full pints across the bar to the blonde and took her money.
“You told me you didn’t have friends,” Lucy said over her shoulder at me as she put the money in the till.
My face got hot. That was the line I’d given her that night a year ago when she’d asked me to her place and I’d botched the whole stupid thing. I had no fucking clue what to do when women looked at me, wanted that kind of thing from me. It made me nervous. It made me say stupid things like “I don’t have friends.”
Which is true. But who says it?
“Relax, Tommy,” she said. “I’m only teasing.”
She turned the volume down on the TV. Back in the kitchen a bell rang, and Lucy went back probably to grab my burger.
I’d been cutting and hauling granite and sandstone since six this morning; my neck was jacked. My arms ached. I rolled my shoulder, listening to the tendons snap, crackle and pop. I was one of the younger guys on the crew, and I tried to help out the old guys as much as possible. Paul was fucking forty and had Lupus, and he was still hauling stone. It was nuts.
The front door opened again just as Lucy came in from the kitchen carrying two plates. She paused in the doorway, looking as if she’d seen a ghost, and her expression was so weird I turned to see who’d walked in.
The door was open behind her so I couldn’t get a look at her face, but the new arrival was dressed sharp. One of those tight skirts that came down to a woman’s knee, that managed to look both sexy and classy all at once. Her black hair was cut razor-sharp to her chin, and the heels she wore were high.
Lucy put the plates down on the bar in front of me with a clatter.
“Everything okay?” I asked her in a low tone.
Lucy shook her head once and then turned to the woman who had sat down two stools away from me.
“What can I get you?” Lucy asked with none of her usual friendliness. I put the plain burger down on the floor in front of Pest, but my dog was watching this new woman too.
She didn’t look it, but Pest was a pretty good guard dog. I trusted her instincts about people, better than I did my own. I didn’t like anyone. Pest didn’t like lousy people.
“Gin martini,” the woman said. Her head was tilted down, her hair hiding her face, but something in her voice pinged in my chest. Familiar. Really familiar.
Lucy made the drink and slid it across the bar. The woman put a twenty-dollar bill on the counter, and Lucy lifted her hand. “No charge.”
“Thank you, Lucy,” she said, again in that voice that pulled at something in my brain. “Perhaps there is something in the kitchen that needs your attention?”
I blinked in astonishment as Lucy nodded and disappeared through the kitchen door without so much as shooting me a glance.
Fuck. I was getting set up for something.
I turned to stare openly at the woman as she took a sip of her martini and then carefully placed it back down on her coaster. Lining the glass up with the small damp ring on the blue cardboard. Her skirt was black, and the silky shirt she wore was cream and on top of that she wore a slim leather jacket. Her heels were leopard print.
And there was an alarming amount of danger around her. Like the air before a lightning storm. She was negatively charged, and all the hair on my body stood up in reaction. Every instinct told me to get up and leave.
“Hello, Tommy,” she said.
I jerked back a little. “How do you know my name?”
“You don’t recognize me?” she said, staring at the mirror behind the bottles. I glanced there too and saw her face. It was a beautiful face.
She was Chinese, and she wore bright red lipstick and had diamonds in her ears, peeking through her jet-black hair.
“Should I?” I asked. Pest, at my feet, growled low in her throat, sensing that things were not right.
She turned to look at me straight on. “I was fifteen the last time we saw each other.”
Fifteen.
Jesus.
“And I was covered in blood.”
The penny dropped and nearly knocked me off my stool.
Ride or die.
“Carissa,” I whispered.
She smiled, nodding slightly, the diamonds in her ears winking in the half-light of the bar. “It’s good to see you, Tommy.”
Other people maybe might have hugged at this point. But I wasn’t a hugger, and she exuded a do-not-touch vibe that was as potent as an electric fence. The best I could manage was leaning forward, toward her, remembering the kid she’d been.
We’d been at St. Joke’s the longest, her before me. But there was a part of Carissa that was unknowable. A deep, still lake with a bottom too far to ever reach. I thought, with a sinking stomach, that whatever had happened to her in that hospital had a lot to do with that.
“What…” I felt myself smiling even though it wasn’t exactly joy I experienced when I looked at her. I’d spent a lot of time putting those memories to bed, pretending, when I had to, that they never happened. But I couldn’t deny the fact that it was good to see her, and looking like a highly polished diamond. She was stunning. And she looked so…clean.
I was smeared in our past; it hung off me like a parasite. The kind of thing I was sure people could see when they looked at me.
This guy, they’d think, is damaged goods.
But her? The past—our past—I couldn’t see it on her. It was like it didn’t even touch her.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I’m here for you,” she said. She got off her stool and came to sit next to me, bringing her martini with her. Pest growled half-heartedly, and I picked her up and put her in my lap to calm her down. She could get yappy when stressed out.
“Guard dog?” Carissa asked, eyeing Pest with one arched brow.
“She likes to think so.”
“She’s ugly.”
“Yes, she is.” I smiled despite myself. “You look good, Carissa.”
“You,” she said with a breathy laugh, “look completely different.”
“Not that different.” Embarrassed, I put my hand through my hair.
“Someone finally fed you. You look good, Tommy. Really good.”
“That, we both know is a lie.” I had sandstone dust in my hair no matter how many times I washed it and my neck w
as red from the sun. My hands… I put them around my beer.
“You were always so modest. I remember that about you, you know. That you were modest and that you tried to take care of everyone.”
“Right.”
“We were kids. And you did the best you could.”
I cleared my throat and took a sip of my beer. Me taking care of everyone hadn’t turned out well for anyone, really. “What happened to you after that night?” I asked. “We looked for you—”
“You and Simon.” It wasn’t a question; she knew we’d been looking for her. “I was surprised you two stayed in touch after that night.”
“He took me to the hospital,” I said. “I couldn’t shake him after that.”
It was a tired joke. A lame one, so far from the truth it was almost insulting.
“I had no interest in being found,” Carissa said.
“Rosa—”
“I know,” she said in hushed tones, because the Rosa thing was a fucking tragedy. “She gets out soon.”
“Beth?” I had looked for Beth for years. Simon, too. And Simon had serious skills in that department. But Beth’s mom had covered their tracks, and Simon thought she’d changed her name and the trail had gone cold.
Simon and me had lived for years waiting for the other shoe to drop from that night. But over time it started to feel like that night was a bad dream we’d shared. The only proof that it actually happened was the fact that we were friends. Because guys like us would not have crossed paths otherwise.
But Carissa was here, solid proof it had not been a dream.
“We are discussing you.”
I blinked. “Yeah? You need a stone mason or something?”
She pulled from her sleek black leather bag a big manila envelope, which she set on the bar and pushed across the wood toward me. It made a scraping sound, like nails across a chalkboard. “It’s time for you to pay your debt.”
The words were barely out of her mouth and I knew what she was talking about.
That night.
The debt.
I’d thought about this moment. I’d thought about it so much I was sure I knew what I’d do, how I’d feel. I had a speech even. About how I wasn’t that kid anymore and Bates could do whatever he wanted, but I wasn’t going to hurt anyone for my freedom.
