by Evelyn Glass
“I thought there might be Family guys on this place, or cops,” Chance mutters.
“On my place? Please.” Nate pauses, and then begins to whisper very quickly, “Listen, Chance, listen, if this is about me not answering my phone, you need to know that I’ve changed my phone since we last spoke. When I heard about what went down at the warehouse, I killed that number. Had to, had to. Better safe than sorry, I always say! And now you’re here and…God help me, I would rather have the Boss here than you. Anyone but you, Chance. I’ve seen the news. Is that it? Have you already killed the others? Ten, twenty, thirty? I guess it doesn’t make any difference to you. The Boss dead, Tony dead, the men dead? And now you’re ticking me off the list?” He shakes his head, but somehow, he doesn’t seem nervous, just…sad. “Just please remember all I’ve done for you over the years. Please, Chance. You had to kill them. That was about—about respect—or loyalty—or—or—I’m sure you had your reasons. But me? I’ll disappear. You’ll never see me again. You’ll never hear from me. You know I can do it.”
Chance just grins at him. “Knock it off,” he says. “We ain’t here to hurt you. Goddamn, you’ll make the lady think I’m some kind of psycho with talk like that.”
“I know you’re some kind of psycho,” I say, pinching his elbow.
“Look,” Chance says. “You got a spare room? ’Cause we need somewhere to lie low for the night, while we make up our minds about what we’re gonna do, alright?”
“Yes, yes,” Nate says, smiling ear-to-ear, like a man glad to just be alive.
So Chance is the most feared man in the Family, by the sounds of it. I don’t know what to make of that. More feared than the Boss of Family? More feared than any of the other hitters? I’ve seen him deal with bloody men like it was no big thing. I’ve seen him kill men. And yet it’s difficult to connect the feared Family hitter with the man I’ve come to know, the man with a fleck of blue in his eye and a fleck of brightness in the darkness of his heart.
Nate leads us through to a spare bedroom, which is covered in dust from disuse. I ask Nate if he has any cleaning stuff, and he takes me to the kitchen cupboard and hands me a rag and some spray. As I go around the room cleaning, a thought occurs to me, a thought which has so far been stifled by mine and Chance’s closeness. But now everything seems like it’s rushing ahead, which means that one day soon I might see Dad again. I stop as I’m dusting the dresser, rag dangling in my hand, shoulders shaking. I fight back the tears. Hormones, I tell myself.
Then Chance is behind me, hands on my shoulders. “Somethin’ wrong?” he asks. He sounds awkward, but he’s asking and that’s what matters.
“Just my dad,” I say, coughing away an incoming sob. “When he finds out where I’ve been, who I’ve been with…He’ll be furious.”
“Will he hit you?” Chance says. “’Cause that ain’t happening—”
“No,” I interrupt. “No, he’s never hit me. He’ll just…shout at me, say nasty things.”
“You can manage that,” Chance says, removing his hands from my shoulders. “You’re stronger’n you think, Becky. Way fuckin’ stronger.”
Chapter Nineteen
Becky
“So you’re not going to kill me?” Nate asks, once Chance and I are set up in the spare room. We sit in the living room again, lamps from all corners lighting it up so that, with all the electronics, I feel like I’m in the inside of a massive machine.
“No,” Chance says. “I ain’t gonna kill you. Come on, man.”
The father of my child is a feared killer, I reflect. The father of my child makes the scary men scared. That confused mixture of fear, respect, lust, affection, and admiration which I felt so often back in the motel room comes to me now. I don’t know how to feel about it.
“Right.” Nate steeples his fingers and presses them into his chin. He really does look like a little kid, all bright-eyed and freckled, which makes it all the stranger when he starts talking about Family stuff. I’m so used to associating that talk with Dad or the men Dad sometimes brings by the apartment. “If you weren’t already sitting down, Chance, my good friend, I would tell you to take a pew. Listen up, because this is going to rock you from dawn to dusk. And let me warn you, you might want to leap at me and hit me or something when I tell you this, on account of it being so world-shattering, but just know I never say something without being able to back it up. Would you agree with that?”
In the tone of someone humoring a child, Chance says, “Yeah, man, I agree.”
“Okay.” Nate takes a deep breath. “Giovanni—the big Boss man, the head honcho—” He glances at me like he’s explaining for my benefit.
“I know who he is,” I say, hoping to move us along.
“Right, right, of course! Anyway, Giovanni is—did you know that if you take ten gigabytes of data and—”
“Nate,” Chance says. “You’re stallin’. Spit it out.”
“Okay.” He rubs his hand over his chin and jaw, rubbing at stubble that I can’t see. “Giovanni has come to believe that you are the man who killed the undercover cop at the warehouse that night, as well as killing everybody else. I know—at least, I have calculated—that the slaughter was, in fact, performed by the men who took this lovely lady hostage. And the cop? Must’ve been them, too. But somehow Giovanni has got it into his head that it was you, or, at least, it suits his purposes to claim that you did it all.”
“The fuckin’ bastard wants to make me a fall guy. Is that it?”
“Could be.” Nate nods. “Could very well be that. There was also something that I found odd, since in all my intelligence there was no sign of it. Did you know that Julian, the Capo, was found dead in the same room as the men dressed in black, the kidnappers?”
“That’s fuckin’ impossible,” Chance says. “That just ain’t possible, Nate. I was there. I was fuckin’ there and I saw everybody in that room. There was fuck all to see, when you get down to it. A desk, a chair, a cell, some chains. Where the fuck was Julian meant to be, under the floorboards? Nah, so Giovanni had one of those fuckin’ ass-lickin’ bastards drag his corpse in after I left so that the Family and the police would get onto me? Is that it? But then who the fuck killed Julian? Julian was a Capo, a made goddamn guy. Why would Giovanni have him killed? Power, maybe? Money? It’s always one of ’em, in my experience. But why set me up? Why not just clip him and be done with it?”
Chance rises to his feet and begins pacing up and down the room, fists hanging at his sides, looking like an angry animal, jaw clenched, arms twitching like he wishes Giovanni was here in front of him right now.
“Becky,” Nate says. “You might want to know that your father was the one who moved Julian’s body into the warehouse. My contacts are telling me it was a show-your-loyalty situation, since Julian was going to be your husband, wasn’t he?”
“Husband,” I repeat, the word a curse when I say it. “No, never. That fat old man was never going to be my husband. But Dad…”
“Don’t worry on that,” Chance says bitterly. “Your dad looked me in the face when I was a kid and told me to go fuck myself. Now I’m a man he wants to send me to the dirt or to the slammer then the dirt. Guess that look in my eyes was somethin’ he really didn’t fuckin’ like, eh?”
I stand up and go to him, but he takes a step back, shaking his head.
“Chance,” I say. “I’ll go to the police and tell them everything, tell them you didn’t kidnap me, and then I’ll go to Dad and get him to tell Giovanni that this is all a big misunderstanding.” Lowering my voice, I go on: “I’ll tell Dad I’m pregnant. I’ll tell him he’s going to hurt the father of my child. He’ll understand. He’ll forgive, when he knows he has a grandchild on the way.”
“Stop bein’ so fuckin’ trusting!” Chance roars, slamming his fist into his chest, looking three times his regular size as he looms over me. He stands there, panting, and then takes a step back. “Bein’ so damned trusting is what got you kidnapped in the first place. Eve
ryone’s an enemy, Becky, every damn person on this planet is an enemy until they prove themselves a friend. It ain’t the other way around, like you’d have it. You think like that, you don’t live very long. Grow up. The world’s a darker place’n you think.”
He stops, breathing heavily, gazing down at me with an expression I find difficult to read. It’s like he’s angry with me, but not because of anything I’ve done. Angry with me because of who I am, maybe, angry with me for being the silly girl who decided to stay in snow-cold New York instead of fleeing to sun-warm California with my mother, the silly girl who thought she could fix the man who tried to sell her like a pet. But if I’m that sort of woman, I’m also the sort of woman who tries with men like you, I want to say. But I realize I’m crying, choking back sobs, tears sliding down my cheeks. I want to scream at him, to bash my hands against his chest, but part of me knows he’s right. Of course he’s right. I was kidnapped. But that doesn’t mean I should let that experience rob me of all hope, of all empathy. That doesn’t mean I should let that experience make me cold, mean, miserable.
I turn away, back to him, and collect myself, trying to fight away the tears. I don’t want to cry. I don’t want to be weak.
Nate clears his throat. “I think I need a glass of water. I’ll leave you to it, guys.”
He leaves the room. After a few moments, Chance walks up behind me. I hear the floorboards creaking where he rocks back and forth on his feet, unsure of where to go, what to do. I know it’s hard for him in situations like this. But then, he shouldn’t have shouted at me like that.
“I was only trying to help,” I tell him, once the tears are no longer welling in my eyes. “That was all, Chance. I was just trying to find a way to help you. I want you to be safe. I want everything to be okay. That’s it. That’s all I want.”
“There’s a way to end this,” Chance says. “But it means we’ll never see each other again.”
The words shock me so much, I turn swiftly on him. “What do you mean?” I demand.
“I’m trouble for you, Becky,” Chance says. “I don’t reckon a man like me can keep a woman like you, not forever, not like you might want it. I reckon the only way to end this is for me to leave. Then you can go to the police, to your dad, and tell ’em whatever you want. But if you go to ’em with me at your side, I’m gonna end up dead. The cops, Giovanni, Julian…somebody’s gunnin’ for me. Might be your old man, might be the Boss, might be some player we don’t know about. But it all amounts to the same thing for us. We can’t be together.”
“No!” I snap. I place my hands on his shoulders, as I’ve done many times whilst we’ve been having sex, so much so that when he’s naked I can see my nail gouges in his skin. “You’re the father of my child, Chance. We have to stay together, no matter what. And—” I pause, wondering if this will be going too far, but then I reflect that if there was ever a time to be honest, it’s when he’s threatening to leave me. “And I think I love you, Chance. When I think of being apart from you, I get a pain in my chest, a real, physical pain, and when I think about our child growing up and not knowing who his or her daddy is—”
Chance lifts up his shirt, showing me his scarred-covered belly. Turning in a slow circle so I can see the scars on his back, too, he says, “Do you reckon a man like this can ever be a daddy, Becky? Do you really think any kid deserves to have a hunk of scars for a father? Nah, you’d be better off goin’ back and findin’ someone else, someone who with a well-to-do job like, I dunno, like a fuckin’ accountant or something, something where blood and bone plays no part in it. That’d be the smart thing.”
“I don’t want the smart thing. I want you.”
He offers me his small half-smile at that, but doesn’t reply. “We better get some sleep. We can talk over all this in the mornin’, make sense of it then when it’s had time to get through this thick skull.” He taps his forehead. “Goddamn, Becky, you’ve got magical powers to make me look forward to goin’ to bed and holdin’ you. Do you remember what I was when I found you at the warehouse?” He calls through to the kitchen, where Nate is pouring, draining, and re-pouring a glass of water: “We’re gonna hit the sack, Nate. We’ve got a lot of shit to think about. We’ll talk more in the mornin’, alright?”
“Okay, works for me, guys!” Nate calls back.
We go into the bedroom, the heating blasting into the air, and together lie down on the bed. We don’t undress. I think we’re both too tired for that. I didn’t realize just how exhausted I was until I lay my head on the pillow. Now, I close my eyes and nuzzle into Chance, listening to the sound of his breathing.
“It’s okay,” Chance says, stroking my head. “It’s all gonna be okay, Becky. You’ll see. Life has a way of workin’ itself out sometimes. I reckon in the mornin’ everything’s gonna seem way better.”
“Yeah,” I whisper, sleep taking me.
It feels like I sleep for a matter of seconds, but when I open my eyes, murky sunlight is resting on my face. I sit up, eyes still closed, stretching my arms out, working the sleep out of my joints. “Morning,” I say, reaching across the bed for Chance.
But my hand grips a handful of sheets and nothing else.
“Chance?”
I’m on my feet, rushing through the apartment. The living room, the kitchen, empty…I rush through into Nate’s bedroom. He jumps up, leaping across the room, kicking over a tray of hard drives.
“Where’s Chance?”
“He went last night, after you fell asleep,” Nate says, relaxing when he sees it’s me. “Said he’d told you. Said you were okay with it. He said you agreed that it was better this way.”
I leave the room, head pounding, heart pounding, pulse pounding in my hands. Somehow, I make it to the landline phone. Somehow, I manage to dial my dad’s number. Somehow, I manage to say, “Dad, I’m coming home.”
Chapter Twenty
Becky
Winter turns to spring and life goes on. It’s odd, because I was so obsessed with Chance that I assumed life would just end if we were ever parted. Life became that motel room, life became touching each other, life became holding each other close. Life became waiting for him to look into my eyes, just once, or to make love to me instead of fuck me, or to whisper my name, or to put his hand on my belly and tell me he can’t wait to meet our child. Life became the expectations of our shared future. Life became his lips, his scars, his blue-flecked eyes. And now life just goes on, on and on, as though time hates me and wants to punish me. Life doesn’t stop. It’s too cruel for that. It never stops.
I move back into the apartment with Dad and to say things are awkward would be like saying that balancing on a tightrope is difficult. I find myself resenting him like I never have before. And this resentment is compounded by the guilt I feel about it, guilt which I should not feel, guilt which I have no business feeling. He tried to sell me, he’s partly the reason I was kidnapped, and yet I still can’t distance myself from him completely. I still find myself thinking: But he’s my dad. It makes me sick. It annoys the hell out of me. So I bunker myself in my room, laying down newspapers and setting up my easel and painting. The police asked few questions when I returned, even when I told them Chance was innocent, he never hurt me. They didn’t care. All they cared about was a news article and a flashy headline: Aspiring Artist Found Safe.
“You shouldn’t say that he was nice to you,” Dad says to me one day, when we happen to both be in the living room. I was here first, watching a reality show, and he barged in and sat down and for several minutes we just sit here, awkwardly, until he comes out with this, in a gruff, grizzly voice. A drunk man’s voice. “It makes people think the wrong thing,” he goes on. “It makes people think that you went with him willingly and that you—that you did things with him or somethin’. It makes people get the wrong idea.”
“I don’t care what it makes people,” I say. “I don’t give a shit about what people think.”
“Watch your language!” Dad snaps. “L
ook, I know you might still be mad at me for arranging yours and Julian’s marriage, but you need to understand that Julian would’ve been a very good match for you. He was rich, he had connections, he was—”
“A perverted old man who gave me to a group of men to be gang-raped.”
“Now, Becky, how was I supposed to know—”
“You weren’t supposed to sell me in the first place!” I scream at him, waving my arms, feeling like a madwoman in a topsy-turvy world. “Let’s not pretend that you tried to sell me to an old man out of any concern about me, Dad. You tried to sell me because you’re weak and couldn’t walk away from the blackjack table!”
At some point during my speech, I’ve climbed to my feet. Now, I’m standing over him, looking down into his red-cheeked face, his eyes bloodshot, his skin sagging. And even now, in the midst of my anger, I can see the good man in there. I see the man who used to sit me on his knee and read me stories about foxes and rabbits and I see the man who several times during my childhood would come home and cry in the bathroom when he thought nobody could hear him, cry about what his work made him do. I see the man who bought me my first painting set when I came home from school one day with my fingertips covered in blue.
