by Pink, Nikki
I felt disappointed that he kept it from me, even though I realized it was more oversight rather than malicious deceit. I probably should have recognized it was a nickname. And did Lonnie even know my last name?
“Let’s go. My paperwork should all be sorted.” He raised his eyebrows at the lady behind the desk. “Right?”
She nodded. “Have a great day, and y’all come back now!” The lady’s shoulders shook at her little joke. I imagined her saying it a dozen times a day and never getting bored with it. I found myself grinning too. As if anyone would deliberately come back here.
“Hold on,” I said, squeezing Lonnie’s upper arm.
He looked down at me, his beautiful eyes glinting. “What’s the matter?”
I nodded towards the door.” There’s a bunch of reporters out there. And the blue haired bitch.”
“Shit.”
“All because you hit some guy?”
“I guess. Actually, it turned out that guy was the son of a state senator. And the band have been making waves recently…”
I nodded. That helped to explain the media interest a little bit more, but still, it seemed odd. Then again, with hundreds of TV channels and thousands of websites desperate for content they could make a story out of anything these days. A biker hired as security fracturing the jaw of the son of a state senator at an up and coming band’s ‘secret’ gig would be more than enough for some entertainment news.
“All right,” said Lonnie as he took off his cut, “let’s do this.” He pulled the leather clothing over his head to cover his face. I laughed and pulled off my light denim jacket and placed it over my face, leaving a small slit to look through.
Lonnie grabbed me by the hand, his strong grip reassuring as we made it over to the door.
“One… Two… Three!”
We burst through the door into the huddle of photographers. Lonnie lowered his shoulder and barged through them. We had the element of surprise and once we were through I pulled the jacket apart slightly to get a better view and pulled Lonnie’s hand, leading him to my car at a rapid trot.
The reporters hurried behind us but we made it into the car before they could get a good shot of us. When we were safely ensconced in the vehicle I locked the doors and held my clipboard up to cover my face. Lonnie used his jacket to do the same.
“Where to now?” I asked.
“How about that breakfast we were going to have?”
“Breakfast? It’s nearly 2pm!”
“Afternoon is the best time to have breakfast,” he said with a grin.
I laughed at the ridiculousness of his sentence. “Really?”
“Really. In fact, any time of the day is the best time for breakfast. A full English makes the perfect breakfast, lunch, or dinner.”
“The full English, huh? You think they’ll do that around here?”
He shrugged. “Probably not, but I’ll make do. Now, how about you run down some of these arseholes.”
“Your prospects just cleaned my car. I’d rather not get blood all over it.”
I started the engine and slammed my hand down on the horn which gave a rather unimpressive extended beep. I edged the car toward the reporters who grudgingly parted to avoid being run down. I held my clipboard in front of my face, tilted down so that I could peek underneath a few yards ahead of the car.
With Lonnie holding his cut over his head and me with my clipboard we edged out of the parking lot and onto the street. We were home free. I dropped my clipboard on my lap and pushed my foot down, accelerating us briskly away.
29
Lonnie
“Two sausages, four bits of bacon, two fried eggs, a piece of fried bread, a field mushroom, baked beans, fried tomatoes, black pudding and some haggis. With brown sauce. And a proper cup of tea. Builders.” I said confidently, watching Ava suppress her smiles as I finished off my order.
The server looked at me like I was from another planet. I suppose I was, in a way. The middle aged waitress looked down at her pad where she had initially started to scribble before giving up. She wrinkled her nose then looked up at me again. “Sir, would you mind ordering from the menu?”
I sighed and reluctantly gave the menu a once over. I wouldn’t be getting a Full English here it seemed. I’d have to have a word with Chad about giving me breakfast restaurant recommendations. “Fine. I’ll have the Big Cowboy Breakfast.” The waitress opened her mouth to speak again but I pre-empted her, years of having lived in the US finally having trained me. “Wheat toast. Orange juice and black coffee. Eggs sunny side up.”
“I’ll have the Alamo omelet with wheat toast as well, and black coffee,” said Ava, giving the waitress a winning smile. Now she was less angry I realized that she had the kind of face you could lose yourself in, at least I could. When I’d first met her -- if being slapped across the face really counts as meeting -- it was her fiery temper and body with just the right curves that intrigued me. But now I could see she was the whole package. Deep, thoughtful eyes with a playful sparkle, a smile to make nuns weep and a nose you just wanted to squeeze. And her lips. Just perfect for a kiss, and even better for--
“What are you staring at?”
“Nothing,” I said. Shit. What the hell had I been doing? I’m supposed to be a tough biker not a dreamy kid. Fuck it, there was no one here to laugh at me. Not that I cared if they did.
“Have I got something on my face?”
I leaned over the table and put a hand out to her cheek as if to wipe something off. Instead I cupped the back of her head and pulled her firmly toward me. She didn’t resist and a moment later her hot damp lips met mine across the table. Electricity flowed between us when we connected and I knew I was in serious shit. This girl and me really had something and I didn’t know where it was going to take us.
She broke away and leaned back in her booth, her cheeks tinged with red and her eyes wide. I leaned back too, wanting more but knowing I couldn’t have it right now. The waitress appeared and set down two hot cups of coffee and gave me a disapproving look. I didn’t care.
My eyes flickered across the room and latched onto the TV in the corner. Fuck. It was tuned to some bullshit entertainment channel and the current story they were running was me. I guessed it was time to tell Ava my little secret.
30
Ava
“You want to hear something about my past?” he asked.
My mind was running at a hundred miles an hour and doing some listening instead of some speaking seemed like a good idea. That kiss, such a simple thing after our earlier frantic lovemaking -- fucking -- had changed everything. This guy. This guy was no longer just ‘a guy’, he was no longer a dirty little escape from the drudgery of my job and the responsibility of looking after my sister. No longer just a little fling, a bit of rough to tide me over. I could see now, whether I liked it or not, we had a destiny together.
Destiny. Shit, that reminded me. Hopefully this destiny was less dumb than that imagined by his old friend the bassist.
“Hello?” he said to me.
Shit. What was the question? Oh yeah, about his past. “Sure.”
“You know I know the band, right?”
I nodded. They were all British and he knew them from back home. That’s how his club had got the job providing security for the band’s shows.
“The thing is…”
I tilted my head, giving him a quizzical look. “What?”
“I was in the band. That’s why,” he waved a hand across the room to a television, “they were so interested in me at the cop shop.” On the television were me and Lonnie, faces covered, running toward my car. I felt a surge of excitement followed by annoyance. I’d never been on the television before but I wasn’t exactly sure this is how I wanted to appear.
“You were in the band?”
“Yeah. About ten years ago. It was called Wrack and Ruin then, but it’s basically the same band. Si took my spot.”
“The guy my sister is with? That Si?”
He nodded.
“How come you didn’t mention it before?”
He shrugged. “That part of my life is over. Done. I left it behind, came to the States. We had a record deal back then but it fell through. We were all arguing all the time, it was just no good for me, or for any of us. Shit, I’m surprised they managed to stay together without killing each other all this time. I couldn’t deal with that shit anymore - didn’t need that kind of drama in my life.
I had an uncle in Philadelphia who invited me to come over so I just said ‘fuck it’, and I left. Then a couple of years later I ended out West and,” he fingered his patch-laden cut, “I kind of settled down over here.”
“Huh.” I looked at him again, imagining him up on a stage with an instrument. I could kind of see it. Girls would have loved that bad boy. “Do you miss it?”
He laughed. “Hell no. Living in crappy health-hazard housing with those crazy motherfuckers? Busking for money, selling weed, scraping money together to buy weed. Shit. It sucked.”
“They’re doing all right now though.”
He shrugged. “Yeah. But they spent near a decade living in squalor. I’ve had it better. And shit, I don’t need the money they’re earning now. I do okay and okay is good enough for me. What do I need? Give me a motorcycle, somewhere to sleep at night, cheap food and cheap beer and friends. The club. That’s all I need. Fuck the rest of it.”
I nodded. It sounded so simple, and simple sounded appealing. “Sounds nice.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“I know you work in marketing, but what do you do?”
The waitress came back with two steaming plates the size of the wheels on my car. She laid them down in front of us, her thick forearms flexing as the plates thumped onto the table. I was ravenous and had been considering ordering extra toast, but upon seeing the size of the meal in front of me decided to shelve that plan for the time being.
“I don’t know. I look after Lily, I work. I was studying and working so much the last few years. I didn’t get around to really doing anything. Nothing for fun, anyway. Not since our parents passed away.”
I shoved my fork into my omelet and it oozed molten cheese, peppers, sausage and jalapenos. This was going to be good.
“What happened?”
Talking about death is never fun. I wanted to just eat my brunch. But shit, I was getting close to Lonnie, wanted to get closer. I guessed I could manage a short answer.
“It was a Friday night. They always went out on a Friday. Dinner and a movie. On the way back they went through an intersection. They had a green light. A semi went through the intersection too. The driver was looking at his new cell phone. He had a red light. Sixty miles an hour. Boom.
One minute we were a happy family, the next me and Lily were orphans. It was a week after my high school graduation. Suddenly I was an adult with serious responsibilities.”
He was holding a piece of toast in one hand that had paused on its journey from plate to mouth. I could see in his eyes he felt sorry for me, and regretted asking that question then.
“It was a long time ago. I’m okay now. Let’s see if we can clear these plates.”
He looked down at his Big Cowboy breakfast and nodded dubiously. I think I had caused him to lose his appetite a little.
“Alright. Let’s eat. Then make a plan for this evening. The fight.”
I nodded and put the first forkful of omelet into my mouth. It was heavenly. Chad Chad Price rapidly went up in my estimation as I began to devour the plate full of food in a most unladylike manner. It was damn good and if Lonnie noticed the way I shoveled the food down he didn’t comment, being too busy attacking his own plate. Although it wasn’t an ‘English’ breakfast he seemed pretty satisfied with the food nonetheless.
31
Ava
We pulled into the parking lot of the warehouse. Initially Lonnie had wanted to drive us on his motorcycle but I'd pointed out that the car was much more practical. If all went as planned we'd be leaving with Si and Lily, and who knows whether they had a vehicle or not. Grudgingly Lonnie had returned to the passenger seat of my car.
I understood his feelings. After having ridden on the back of his motorcycle earlier that day I found myself missing it already. It had felt like I was flying on his back and I imagined it was a little like Lois Lane felt when carried by Superman. Lonnie was much hotter than Superman though, I thought to myself. I looked over at him and gave him a grin.
"Alright, let's find out what the hell is going on in there," said Lonnie.
I nodded. "Is this legal?"
"The underground fight club?" he asked.
I nodded.
He shrugged. "It's not a legally sanctioned sport like boxing or MMA. But I don't think it's technically illegal either. It's kind of a gray zone. I'm sure there is some dodginess along the side which is definitely illegal though."
"Dodginess? Like what?"
We walked across the lot past rows of cars, some of which included luxury Benzes, BMWs, Audis and more. He nodded toward an S-class Mercedes. "It can't be just some ghetto kids fighting in there. There's money involved. My guess? Gambling. So the fights themselves might not be illegal, but I bet some of the other activity is."
I nodded. Gambling made sense.
We reached the door of the warehouse. It was in fact a door within a door. There was a massive shutter large enough to let a truck through that was pulled down and locked, but within the shutter was a regular people-sized door. And at the door were two large, shaven headed white men, each about the size of an old phone booth. They barely looked like they could fit through the door themselves.
"Alright boys," said Lonnie with confidence as he led us between them.
I followed right behind, scared one of the silent men would reach out and grab me and pick me up. I wondered if Lonnie felt as intimidated by them as I did. If he was scared by them he didn't show it.
Inside we were confronted by a makeshift wall which created a fairly narrow passageway. We turned right, walked a few feet and there was a sliding glass opening in the wall. A little man with thick glasses looked out at us. "Two? That's $20"
Lonnie pulled out a slim wallet from his jeans and slid a twenty through the gap under the glass. "Got a list of the fights for tonight?"
The man slid a piece of paper under the screen. It was a low quality photocopy, but it had the information we needed.
Lonnie held it up and jabbed a finger at it. "Look," he said, pointing at the fourth fight listed "The Burmese Python," that's gotta be him.
The man in the box was still peering at us through his thick glasses when Lonnie turned back to him. "We need to see the, uh, Burmese Python, has he got a dressing room or something?"
The man let out a wheezing laugh and ignored the question. “Why do you want to see him anyway?"
"We're here to support him," I lied, trying to win him over with my most charming smile, "In fact, my sister is with him."
"That's your sister with him, huh?" asked the bespectacled man in the box.
I nodded smiling again. I looked over at Lonnie who was also offering a friendly grin. With any luck we'd be ushered over to our targets in no time.
The man picked up a walkie talkie and raised it to his lips. "They're here," he said into the bottom of it.
I looked at Lonnie quizzically. "They're here?" I asked him.
His grin had turned to a frown. It sounded like they had been waiting for us. I looked back toward the entrance. The light that had been pouring in from outside was gone, blocked out by one of the doormen who was now hulking toward us. I looked to my right, past the ticket box to inside. Another man was coming toward us, and behind him another.
"Well," said Lonnie looking at me, "this should be interesting. Let's see where the Oompa Loompas want to take us."
I shivered. Despite Lonnie's upbeat words I could see from the wary shifting of his eyes that he was nervous too.
The man coming from the entrance reached me, and with a gentle tap on my arm that seemed to contain the pent up force of a giant tree blowing in the breeze pointed me inside.
"Come on." said the big man who had reached Lonnie from the other side.
With my whole body shaking I gulped, and began to follow Lonnie as we were marched into the warehouse.
32
Ava
We emerged from the narrow entryway into the main part of the warehouse. It was a cavernous space, the ceiling far above our heads, invisible in the darkness cut with interspersed floodlights that shot down on us blinding any attempts to look upward. There were several dozen people milling around, not of any identifiable cultural sub-group. There were blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians. There were people in their teens and early twenties, and others up to maybe their sixties. It was a real mixed crowd.
The center of the room was dominated by the ring. Raised off the ground it was the focus of most of the lighting and seemed much like the rings I'd seen on television for wrestling matches, at least to my untrained eye. There were four posts, ropes around them and in the middle three men. Two of them were shirtless, all ripped muscles, sweat and tattoos and the other appeared to be a referee. The fight was about to begin, but neither of the guys was Si and my sister was nowhere to be seen.
But we weren't going in the direction of the ring anyway. There were now four large men around us, marching us along the front wall of the warehouse to a metal staircase. Up we went. Clang, clang, clang with each and every step as the four bodyguards and Lonnie thumped up in their heavy boots. My sneakers barely made a sound among their ringing steps.
“Will we be okay?” I whispered to Lonnie.
He gave my hand a squeeze. “No one is going to harm a hair on your head,” he growled.
I smiled, grimly reassured.
