by CD Reiss
So I stepped up to pull them apart, all hundred thirty pounds of me. I must have felt like a leaf falling on Foo’s shoulder. Michael was bent and twisted. Foo pushed him up against the wall by his throat. Michael’s face was beet red from strain, and Foo pulled his fist back to pound that beautiful face into the wall.
“Foo! No!” I punched his back.
I heard a jingle of keys.
Michael held up Foo’s keys by the carabiner. He’d grabbed them from Foo’s belt loop when he’d attacked. Foo let go of Michael with his KILL hand, leaving his perfectly capable RIDE hand to hold down the smaller man.
Michael swung the keychain and threw it out the window. There was a moment of silence then a rattled clink as they hit the ground. “Fetch.”
Foo dropped him to look out the window to the parking lot. I crouched next to Michael. He looked like hell but was still focused on Foo.
“Gracie’s all alone down there,” Michael choked out. “And in this neighborhood.”
“Fuck!” Foo backed up from the window and looked at Michael and me. “I’ll be back.”
Was I sweating? Was my breathing shallow? I had to stop that. Stop. Project nothing but complete ownership of the world and everything in it. “Good, because I’ve got pictures of you and Jake doing enough shit to put you both away for a long time. I’m looking for reasons to go to First and Main.”
Outside, a motorcycle went by. Maybe it was Gracie. Probably it wasn’t. But that was enough to get Foo’s ass in gear and out the stairwell door.
“Are you okay?” I asked Michael.
“Sure.” As if telling the truth in a room full of lies, his nose started gushing blood.
“Jesus! Come on. Let me get you cleaned up.”
I tried to help him stand, but he waved me off, getting to his feet by himself. Drops of blood splashed on the floor, and his white T-shirt was in danger of looking like a murder victim’s. I grabbed the camera bag and put his arm over my shoulder even though he could walk fine. Like medic with a wounded soldier, I led him into my loft.
I kicked the door closed. God, I was so grateful to put a solid metal door between Foo Foo and me. I knew Michael had put himself in a terrible position, and my gratitude expanded my heart wide enough to press against the brittle bars of my rib cage.
I led Michael to the sink and bent him over it. “I’m so sorry, Michael. Do you think it’s broken?”
“That guy?” he said, breathing without his nose. He sounded like a kid, and it was adorable. “You hung out with a tough crowd.”
I pulled a cloth napkin out of the drawer and opened the freezer. “I did. But not anymore.” I wrapped the napkin around a handful of ice. “Okay, turn around. God, I feel so bad.”
“Why?” He closed his eyes and pressed his bloody hand over my hand, pushing the ice into his nose, and curled his fingers around mine.
How could I think about anything but helping him at a moment like this? How could I worry, with blood between us, if there was still a chance I could have him after what had happened in the hall?
“Because it’s my past that came and broke your nose,” I said.
“Not broken.” He leaned back on the sink, and I leaned on him. He put his free arm around my waist, drawing me closer.
“Your mother would never approve,” I said, half joking.
“Probably not.”
“I feel like I should explain.” I said it while hoping the reprieve he’d given me in the car was still good and he wouldn’t make me explain a damn thing.
“Is he that not-first-love you can’t talk about?”
“No, he’s something else entirely.” I blinked back a tear and swallowed a wad of gunk. I wouldn’t cry over my stupid past when this guy was here bleeding for me. “I ran with his crowd after Breakfront. And I got out of it. I haven’t seen any of them in almost nine years.”
“You’re hazardous, Laine. Have I told you that?”
“I think you said something about that.”
“I like it.”
I laughed. “We’ll see how much you like it when your eye swells up.”
“You should see the other guy.” He removed the ice long enough to look at the bloody ice bag and shrug. “He looks fine.”
“Is that what you’re going to tell all your famous friends?” I put the ice back on him.
“I’m going to tell them I met this girl I used to know, and I had to have her. Even after I got punched in the face by some guy who was bothering her, I wanted her. And I’d do it all again just to have her put an ice pack on my nose and stand close to me.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that. Come on. Sit down and take the pressure off.”
He let me lead him to the couch. “Nice place,” he said.
“Thank you. I had an exceptional month, so I bought it.” I hoped I didn’t blush, but I felt my face tingle with regret. I shouldn’t have said that. My exceptional month had included a picture of him and his friends. Their images had sold for my down payment.
I sat him down and took off his shoes then turned his legs so he was lying down. He leaned his head over the armrest and laid his head back, holding the ice pack in place.
I saw something on my dining room table. Something that hadn’t been there before. I walked toward it and breathed deeply.
Michael lay behind me with a face that would explode in the morning. That guy. That mark. That paycheck standing six one, he was all right. No one had ever done anything like that for me.
Looking at the table, all my gratitude and relief dropped out of me as if it were a lead weight in a wet paper towel.
Eight by ten, on monochrome rag paper. The stuff only students and artists used. The stuff you learn on when you’re learning to do it right. The picture’s surface was mottled like a granite countertop because it had been a test print. The exposure went from dark to light across the frame with hard lines between. The photographer had figured out the exposure and didn’t bother letting it sit in the fixer long enough.
Past the destroyed silver gelatin, the subject was visible. On a mattress, bare legs crossed, sat a girl of sixteen with very long mousy hair and grey eyes like old coins at the bottom of a purse. In her hands were a Bic lighter and a cigarette butt that had obviously been salvaged from the ashtray to her right. She was too skinny, wearing a ribbed tank. Her nipples poked through the fabric, and the filthy sheets bunched between her legs covered only enough to show she wasn’t wearing underwear.
“What kind of name is Foo Foo?” Michael said from behind me.
I glanced back. He looked like everything right in his jeans and bloodied white shirt, and I felt as if I needed to be drowned in bleach.
The girl in the picture peered across nine years of ambition, biceps dotted with fingertip-shaped bruises from the night before, beaten down but daring the camera to judge her for being who she was.
Foo’s voice was fresh in my mind from the hallway, and I could hear him and how he liked it.
You like it, don’t you, little slut? Say you like it.
He’d been the first to slap my face while he fucked me. Not the last. He said he didn’t mean nothing by it, then he did it again.
Front hand, backhand.
Ain’t you the sweetest whore. Fuck you, whore.
The camera never lied. The girl in the ribbed tank was a worthless whore, and until Tom had taken that photo and forced me to look at it so many years before, I hadn’t been able to see myself.
My cheeks stung looking at her. Me.
I flipped the picture over to find the note in half-dry Sharpie.
“Laine?” Michael said from a million miles away.
“His name’s Enid,” I said, flipping the photo over. “We called him Foo Foo the Snoo.” I shifted toward the kitchen, holding the picture behind me. “He’s friends with my foster brother. Not the one you met. Not Tom. Another one.”
I got to the kitchen island. It was spotless, like everything else in my house. Why did I notice that now
? Had Michael noticed? Did he think that was who I was?
“This other brother? He was Jake, so we called him Jake the Pillow Snake. Which is from Dr. Seuss. I Can Read with My Eyes Shut. It goes…” Casually, I opened a drawer in the island. Inside, spoons and forks were nestled in shiny sleep. I slid the photo on top of them as if it was normal to keep damning evidence with flatware. “‘You can read about Jake the Pillow Snake or Foo Foo the Snoo.’ See, they were partners.”
And they shared everything.
“Are you all right?” He looked at me sidelong, as if that would give him a better view of my troubles.
“I’m fine.”
He sat up. “I’m putting a bodyguard on you.”
“You are not.”
“Oh, I am, Laine. I am.”
“He’d better run fast, because I’m going to work.”
His phone went off, as if on cue. He ignored it. “You are not going to hang around dark alleys.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I’d forgotten to worry about its silence. Between us, the phones were on fire, and we just stared at each other.
“You gonna get that?” I asked.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and silenced it before dropping it on the coffee table. “I mean it. You’re not safe.”
“Neither are you apparently.” I sat next to him, and he leaned on me. I put my arm around him.
“Touché,” he mumbled, kissing my neck. “But if you think I’m going to let you protect me—”
The napkin of ice threatened to fall, and I held it against his face. “I’m not going to sit here and defend my masculinity with a straight face. But I’m worried about you. And I feel responsible for you getting hit. If anything happens to you—”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
“How do you know?”
“Everyone’s watching me.”
His weight became too much, and I leaned back. He adjusted himself as if his intention the whole time had been to get on top of me.
“You need a bodyguard as much as I do,” I said. “You need to take these guys seriously. I don’t…” I took a deep breath when he pulled up my shirt. “I hate putting you in this position. But he’ll be back.”
“Which is why I’m sending someone for you.” He stroked my belly with his fingertip.
I turned to liquid physically, but a voice echoed in my brain.
Whore.
Slap, and a backhand.
Such a slut.
“He’s from my world. I understand what makes him and his friends do what they do. I understand how to get rid of them.” I hated saying it. I hated how true it was and how I would one day have to come clean about all of it, and I couldn’t, not with the rolling arousal between my legs and the vivid memory of getting fucked and beaten by someone else. “You have more to lose.”
“I do,” he whispered, “I have you.”
He slipped his hand past my waistband and into my panties, going right to my soaked seam. His fingertip brushed my clit, and I combusted, arching my back to get closer as my head shouted.
You love it you love it you love it like a good whore.
“God, Michael. I can’t, I’m… I’m distracted. I—”
“You’re so wet. Please. I want to see you come,” he said. “My pants are staying on.”
“I—”
I can’t.
Don’t.
But the words didn’t come out, because Michael was on top of me, face an inch from mine, and he wasn’t going to hit me and call me names while he fucked me so hard I cried. It wasn’t in him. He just drew lazy circles with his fingertip, sending shockwaves up my back and gathering a lightstorm in the pitch dark.
I put my hands on his face, brushing the little hairless spot in his chin as if it were a talisman. The voice that called me a slut quieted, and the hands that stung my cheeks fell away. Michael was back for me. I was accepted again. Even past the swelling around his eyes, in the depth of the jade, I saw myself in him.
My pussy went white hot under his fingers. I tried to say something, some warning, but I could only open my mouth before my back arched against him. I tried to keep my eyes open, but they shut with the burst of pleasure. My hands squeezed his face as he put it against mine, and my body went rigid, then slack, then rigid, then slack.
“My God, Laine, you’re beautiful.”
“Did I hurt your face?”
“No.” He took his hand out of my pants.
“Thank you.” I brushed my thumbs along his jaw.
“I loved it.”
“I can take care of you.”
“No, I think my head is going to explode.”
“You’re fully erect. I can feel it. I have to finish it for you.”
“I’m a grown man. I’ve had erections before. It’s not a big deal.” He slid down and put his head on my shoulder.
I stroked his hair, waist deep in peace, all worry gone for the moment, and floating in no more than an ocean of gratitude. I must have been more vulnerable than I realized, or he’d reopened some wound with his kindness, because though my sweet reverie stayed, as the minutes passed, a layer of need fitted itself on top of it.
I needed to tell him, if not the details, the outlines of who I was.
“I want you to know,” I whispered, starting somewhere small, then everything I didn’t want to say spilled out. “I have stuff. I’ve never been to jail, but you know, it’s stuff, and it’s ugly, and it scares me. Because, I mean, you’re so perfect, and I’m… I’m just a mess. I’m not whole. I’m a bunch of pieces of a person I cobbled together.” My eyes got wet when I thought of the comparisons between us and that picture in my silverware drawer. “So if you have to move on when you realize that, I’ll understand. You have an image, and if anyone understands protecting a career, it’s me. I mean, I’ll be mad, don’t get that wrong, but also.” I swallowed and blinked, shifting my head so he wouldn’t feel the tear on his forehead. “I won’t blame you.”
I waited for an answer. Anything. A change in position or a word on any subject. The weather. Sports. Something. But all he did was breathe.
I smiled so wide, tears fell into my mouth. He was sleeping. How hard had Foo hit him? Hard enough for a concussion? God, that asshole. I was going to give him a piece of my mind. He’d always called me stupid, and maybe that had been some little sheet-curling game he played, but it didn’t turn me on. Being called a dumb whore because some big biker thought it was funny? Well, no. It wasn’t funny, and it wasn’t true, and when I was face to face with that moron, I would punch his face right back.
Michael’s phone rang. I stretched to see it, but I couldn’t move without disturbing him. I reached but couldn’t get to it. He didn’t move, just a breathing weight on one side. I could have slipped out from under him, even if I didn’t want to get the phone. I could have gotten up and walked around, made coffee, done stuff until he woke. But I didn’t want to get up. He’d fallen asleep with me, and I didn’t want to insult the intimacy or the trust he’d put in me. I’d wanted to have sex with plenty of men, but Michael’s breath on my neck, his foot tucked between the cushions of my couch, his arm draped over my stomach were more intimate than any sexual act. He’d laid himself bare before me, trusting me in the vulnerability of sleep.
I might have drifted off as the sun touched the horizon, or time might have gone faster than it should have, but when his phone rang again, he took a long, deep gasp and woke.
“I couldn’t reach it,” I said, my voice sharp and unwelcome, like a shrieking alarm ending an hour of sweet soft breaths.
“It’s all right.” He reached over me and looked at the phone. “Goddamnit.”
I scooted up to a sitting position when he stood. He swayed, squeezed his eyes shut, and put the phone away, still ringing.
“I’m sorry. I was supposed to do a thing, and I almost slept through it.” He jammed his feet in his shoes.
I got his jacket and helped him into it. “You look l
ike you’re still half asleep.”
“I think I am.” He kissed me once on each cheek then on the lips.
He tried to pull back, but I yanked him onto me. I might never see him again. He could easily walk out and decide I was too much trouble. He’d be crazy not to think that.
“I need you to wait here for an hour,” he said into my cheek. “It won’t take me longer than that to get you a bodyguard.”
“Fine. One hour.”
He put his hand on my cheek and slid it to the back of my neck, drawing me close. “Thank you.”
“Your pleasure.”
“Go out with me. Have a date. Tuesday night.”
A date. So simple. Exactly what people did when they liked each other.
“Dinner?” I said. “In public? With a guy who’s going to have at least one black eye?”
“A movie. Let me show you a little of my world.”
“No.”
He kissed me, and I fell into his urgency and his warmth, smelling dried blood. I didn’t want to believe he could ever care about me. He was a dead end at full speed with broken brakes. He was a labyrinth with no exit, only starvation and the hope that there was a center.
But he was also sweet as spring, an explosion of poppies in Death Valley after a winter of rain. He was lightning before a rainstorm, drowning a dark road in white light for a split second before night soaked the way.
I pushed him away. “The clock’s ticking, Greydon.”
“I’ll pick you up Tuesday.”
“I said no.”
He backed up toward the door. “Don’t go anywhere. I’m sending a guy named Carlos. He runs fast, so give it your best shot.”
“Get out. You bother me.”
I closed the door behind him then ran to the window. I could see the exit of the Whole Foods parking lot in the stripe between two buildings. When I saw his little green Aston Martin drive away, I swallowed the worry I was holding in the back of my throat.
