by Naomi West
“Our president is dead.”
For five minutes, people shout, curse. One man punches the wall and another throws a chair at the floor so hard it snaps in two.
Once that has passed, I say, “I’m the de facto leader until we vote in a new president—”
“Fuck the vote!” Adams snaps. “We pick you! All in favor, say aye!”
Before I can reply the room erupts in a chorus of, “Aye!”
I nod shortly. I expected this, or something like this. But it stings me. Shotgun isn’t the boss anymore, just like that.
“If I’m the president, I’ve gotta tell you that this is war now, bloody war, a war that ain’t gonna be over until the Crooked Demons are nothing but a fucking memory. Shotgun is dead, and I’m never letting that go.”
The men stamp their feet, clap their hands, shaking the walls with their anger.
I go to one of the club girls and say, “I want a vigil for Shotgun in the main bar area.”
“Okay, Rocco.”
I go to a table with Adams, clicking my neck from side to side, wishing the man who shot Shotgun was here now so I could take out my rage on him. But when you get down to it, it wasn’t a man who shot Shotgun. It was a club, an entire club, and the leader of the club is the club. Shotgun taught me that.
“We’ll get them, lad,” Adams says, lighting a cigarette. “We’ll get every damn one of them.”
Chapter Twelve
Simone
I’m expecting the call from Rocco but it still surprises me to hear his voice. It’s been a week since Shotgun’s death and he’s already been cremated, which was in his will. I haven’t seen Rocco in all that time. I haven’t done much of anything except sit up with Cecilia and try to make sure she isn’t sinking even further into a pit of despair. The more I think about Rocco, and Shotgun’s death, the more I realize that I can’t be with him. A man died. Just look at how devastated Cecilia is. Is this really the life I want?
I try to keep my voice casual as I respond.
“Hello.”
“Simone.” His voice is growly, full of emotions left unsaid. I wonder if he’s been thinking of that night in the booth as well. I wonder if he feels the strange mixture of lust and guilt and desire just like I do. “We’re riding into the desert tomorrow to scatter Shotgun’s ashes.”
“I know.”
I’m sitting at the kitchen counter, keeping my voice low. Cecilia is asleep on the couch, curled up into a ball.
“Your sister’s asked you to come.” It isn’t a question.
She hasn’t so much asked as begged. I tried telling her I didn’t want to see Rocco, even though that’s half a lie. I want to see him. I just can’t let myself. Cecilia fell for a biker and now she’s a wreck on the couch. It was our fault Shotgun died to begin with. Rocco’s world isn’t my world. There are too many reasons stacked against us.
“Hmm-mm,” I mumble, realizing I haven’t answered.
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know, Rocco. I just . . .”
“You don’t want to see me.”
I don’t reply to that. Instead I say, “Cecilia will be there no matter what.”
“Of course she will,” he says. “But don’t you think it’d mean a lot to her if you came? I know your parents ain’t coming. She needs at least one member of her family with her. You can’t just force her to go alone. Ain’t that cruel, Simone?”
“Cruel!” I hiss, covering my mouth with my hand so I don’t disturb Cecilia. “Cruel is bringing a perfectly good woman into a life of crime and then not even protecting yourself. Cruel is breaking a woman in half because you fancied another four or five drinks. I can’t get the image out of my head, Cecilia leaning against his shoulder like that. Why wasn’t he protecting her, or himself?”
“He should’ve been,” Rocco mutters. “I’ll never argue against that. But that’s done, and she needs you now. That’s all.”
“I think you’re using Cecilia as an excuse because you want to see me.”
He doesn’t reply at first. The silence hangs between us. In the background, I can hear people talking, glass knocking against glass. Maybe he’s at a bar. It’s one in the afternoon. Maybe he’s day drinking. Eventually he says, “You know I want to see you. But that isn’t the point.”
“Whose bike would I be riding out on?” I ask.
“What?” He seems caught off guard.
“You said you were riding out to the desert. Is it one of those biker salute deals? If so, whose bike would I be riding out on?”
“Mine,” he says. “If you want.”
If I want . . . That’s the crux of all this. Because I do want to. I want to quite badly.
“Just the funeral,” I say. “And then I’m done with the club. I’m done with bikers, and I’m done with—” I cut short. I feel mean. It’s not a good way to feel.
“Me,” Rocco finishes. “You’re done with me. Cecilia has all the details. We’ll pick you up tomorrow.”
He hangs up before I can say anything else. I spend the next hour cleaning my apartment, washing dirty dishes and collecting the empty ice cream containers and potato chip packets which Cecilia leaves scattered all over the place. I’ve just finished dusting when she sits up on the couch, rubbing her eyes. Her eyes have been red nonstop for this past week. I hear her in the night, weeping into her fist, or in her sleep, whispering for Shotgun to hold her.
She looks up at me. She doesn’t seem like the wild party chick anymore. This girl wouldn’t hack away my prom dress. This girl wouldn’t smoke cigarettes. She looks broken and much younger than twenty-five.
“I heard you with Rocco,” she says. “I’m guessing it was Rocco.”
“It was,” I confirm.
“And you’re coming?”
“I . . .” I want to tell her I’m not sure, but her expression is too vulnerable. “I’m coming.”
“I really loved him,” she says. “I know Mom and Dad and probably you thought it was just Cecilia being Cecilia, but I really, really loved him.”
“I know.” I can’t doubt it now, not after seeing how hard it’s hit her.
The next morning Cecilia and I are dressed in black standing outside my apartment building. It’s the hottest day of spring and already the funeral outfit is sticking to me. Cecilia doesn’t seem to notice the heat. She just stares straight ahead, as if she’s waiting for Shotgun to appear out of nowhere. Soon the rumbling of bikes sounds from a few streets over. I swallow. I know I shouldn’t be nervous about seeing Rocco. Today is for Simone, for Shotgun’s friends. And yet I feel like a woman who’s about to see her crush. I steel myself, make myself hard. It doesn’t matter what I felt in the booth. All that matters is the look on Cecilia’s face and the blood on the dance floor.
My street is filled with bikes, at least one hundred and fifty of them, so many that people look out of their windows and cars blast their horns. Rocco climbs from a bike at the head of the army. Beast stands at his shoulder. He looks at me once, quickly, and then turns to Cecilia. “You’ll be riding with Beast, if that works for you, Cecilia. He’s my VP now.” He speaks to her respectfully. I feel an ache in my chest. Could this man really be good? Could he really be different from the life he leads?
“Let’s get going,” he says after a pause, looking around at the watching bystanders. “One of these folks might feel like dialing 911. Come on.”
I put on the jacket and the helmet that Rocco gives me, and then climb onto his bike behind him. I keep telling myself that I should be focused on Cecilia and the funeral, but as we ride out into the desert I’m achingly aware of my hands on his belly. Being this close to him, even if there is leather between us, reminds me of the night in the booth. The vibrations of the bike are like the gyrations of our lovemaking. I feel sick with guilt. It’s wrong. Cecilia is breaking into a million pieces and here I am getting wet from the rumbling of a motorcycle.
We stand in a solemn line as Rocco and then Cecilia gi
ve speeches in the desert. All around us, the desert stretches out, the sun beating down on the sand. A hundred and fifty bikers sweating into their leathers, Rocco shouting into the dead quiet, and then Cecilia weeping and sobbing at the front of the group. I think that’s it, and I’m ready to go—Rocco looks good in his suit and the last thing I need right now is for Rocco to look good—but then some of the men start assembling a marquee with pieces stored across all of their bikes.
“Do you think he’ll be okay out here?” Cecilia asks me, sipping Diet Coke and squinting across the desert.
“Yes,” I tell her, as the bikers talk around us. “Of course he will.”
It’s the only thing I can tell her. I’ve never given much thought to death or ashes or deserts. Cecilia leaves me alone a few minutes later, going to talk with some of the club girls. I sip my Diet Coke, trying to get through this without an incident. But then Rocco taps me on the shoulder. “Can we speak in private for a second?” he asks.
I want to say no, but then Cecilia might see me causing a fuss. I can’t cause a fuss here, so I follow Rocco over to the bikes. Standing in the unwavering sun away from the DIY reception, Rocco looks at my face for a long time without saying anything.
“What?” I say, after almost half a minute. “You’re making me nervous.”
“The violence has messed you up,” he says. “I see that, Simone, just by looking at you. But I need to know if what we had—goddamn, I sound like a woman.” He lowers his voice. “I need to know if what we did, how we talked with each other . . . Was it all just in my imagination? The sex in the booth, it felt like more than sex at the time. Didn’t it?” His dark eyes widen imploringly.
“Sex in the booth?” I shake my head slowly as if I have no idea what he’s talking about. I have to be cold. I have to end this now. After this funeral, I’m back on the straight and narrow. No more bikers, no more violence, no more criminals. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The jokes, the fun, the chemistry . . .” He makes to go on, but then takes a step back. “Fuck, Simone. Just—fuck.”
He pushes past me, returning to the marquee. My chest feels empty, my belly twisted as though with butterflies. I feel like a piece of dirt as I turn and see him, hands in his pockets, joining a group of bikers. He’s their leader now, I know, which makes it all the more complicated. I tell myself I’ve done the right thing. I can’t get with the leader of a criminal biker club. That’s exactly what Cecilia did, and look at her, weeping silently as the club girls ply her with whisky from a hipflask.
“Straight and narrow,” I whisper, making my way back to the party.
Chapter Thirteen
Simone
As I make the five-hour drive between Vegas and Venice, I think back to the day after the funeral when I helped Cecilia move out of her apartment. Mom and Dad would’ve disapproved if they’d had any idea what she was doing. I disapproved, and I was the one helping her. I tried to reason her out of it. Traveling to Venice Beach to try and find a job and an apartment, all on a whim, isn’t meant to be something an Ericson does. Which is exactly why she wanted to do it.
Just before she left, she hugged me and kissed me on the top of my head, something she hadn’t done since we were little girls. “I can’t stay here,” she told me. “There’s too much pain. Every time I go outside, I see Shotgun. I know it seems silly to you and Mom and Dad. But he was the love of my life and I need to start over. I can’t . . . I just want to start over, okay? Don’t tell Mom and Dad where I am. Promise me. You know Mom’ll come riding down on her white horse saying she told me so.”
I promised not to tell them, and I’ve kept that promise. Even if it has caused a few arguments between us.
It’s late summer now, almost autumn, but I’m travelling between Nevada and California so the sun still beats down mercilessly. I crank up the AC and crank up the radio and try not to think about Rocco. It’s been months, and yet not thinking about Rocco still requires some effort.
I get to Venice at three o’clock in the afternoon, aching all over from the long drive. Cecilia doesn’t rent her own apartment. She rents a room in a shared house on the outskirts of town. It’s a large, stonework place with an old look about it. The walls are painted all different colors, pink and yellow and orange. A hippie-looking older woman answers the door, her dreadlocked hair hanging down to her knees. If Mom and Dad saw where their daughter was staying, I think World War III would break out right here in Venice.
“Oh, you’re the sister?” The hippie smiles at me. “She’s on her way down right—”
Cecilia walks out onto the porch, making me and the hippie step aside. “Hey,” she says, more muted than I’ve ever seen her. She’s wearing jeans and a plain white T-shirt, a hoodie thrown over it all. Her hair is tied in a no-nonsense ponytail and the hair dye has begun to fade, her natural hair color showing. “Shall we get going?”
“Uh, sure.” Together we walk to my car. “Where are we going?”
“There’s a bar around the corner.”
“A bar . . .”
She throws me a look. “I know what you just thought then, Mona. You thought, oh no she’s been drinking nonstop for all these months and now she’s an alcoholic and the reason she seems so zombie-ish right now is because she hasn’t had her alcohol yet.”
I smile tightly. “How wrong am I?”
“I just got off a twelve-hour shift at the restaurant,” she says. “That’s why I’m tired. And I haven’t touched a drink since I came up here. I promised myself I wouldn’t until you came to visit. There, are we done with the questioning?”
“I actually didn’t ask a question,” I mutter, climbing into the car. After Cecilia’s given me directions to the bar, I say, “So a restaurant . . . are you waitressing?”
“Yes, and please don’t give me a speech—”
“I’m not going to give you a speech. Please stop accusing me of accusing you.”
A small smile touches her face, lighting it up. For a moment I see the old Cecilia. “Fine, fair enough.”
The bar is surfer-themed with a mannequin holding a surfboard standing out front and shells and netting and surfboards serving as the decoration. It’s a Monday night so it’s quiet except for us and a couple of curly-headed surfer dudes in the corner and a couple of surfer chicks in the opposite corner. Cecilia and I sit as isolated as possible in a booth and then order a glass of red wine to share.
Cecilia sniffs her glass before taking a small sip. “I don’t want to upset you, Mona, but I think I was looking forward to that first sip more than seeing you.” She smiles to take the sting out of her words. “I’m kidding, obviously.”
“Full kidding or half kidding?”
“Half kidding.” She giggles, and takes another sip. “That’s the first time I’ve laughed in months. You’re a miracle worker, Mona. So tell me everything. How’re Mom and Dad?”
“Worried about you, angry at me. They haven’t got the police or a private investigator involved because I’ve showed them some of your texts, but otherwise they’re livid. I think they’re starting to resent me.”
“Sorry,” she whispers. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
You never do, I think but don’t say. It isn’t fair.
“But that doesn’t matter,” I reply. “All that matters is that you’re okay. Are you?”
“I don’t know. I’m keeping my head down. I work as many shifts as they’ll give me. I’ve saved up one thousand five hundred dollars because the rent at the Rainbow House is so cheap.”
“I half expected you to come out with dreadlocks.”
She touches her hair. “No, I don’t do much with my hair anymore. Maybe I will soon. I’m waiting for the dye to fade.”
We make small talk like this for an hour or so, getting through two and a half glasses of wine each. We order another bottle and then Cecilia, a little tipsy now, leans forward. “Can I be a terrible sister and live vicariously through yo
u? I haven’t been on a date because I don’t want to go on a date. It’s too soon, and I think it’ll be too soon for a long time. But I can hear about your dating life. So, how’s it been? Who’ve you been seeing?”
I roll my eyes. “Do we have to talk about this?”
“Just give me a number!” she exclaims wildly, pouring wine into her glass until it’s almost overflowing. “How many dates? Five, four, three, two . . . fewer? One? Fewer?”
“Zero,” I say. “Not that it matters. I don’t have to date. I don’t see that it’s an obligation.”
“No, I guess not. It’s just . . . listen to me, Mona. Your big sister is going to give you some advice now.”
She takes my hand, which comes close to breaking my heart. I can’t remember the last time she took my hand. She’s only older than me by minutes, but right now she does feel like my big sister. “Love is the rarest thing there is. It’s so rare that people get it and don’t even realize they have it and then throw it away and then, only years later, they stop and think to themselves, maybe I was in love there. You know?”
