by Joe Hill
He tossed something at her, a web of black leather straps and buckles, and for an instant she wondered if they were moving in a bondage direction that evening.
“That goes on your leg,” he said. “If you wear the gun on the inside of your thigh, you could walk around in a pencil skirt and no one would know you’re armed. I’m going to shower off. You?”
“Maybe later,” she said, standing up and rising onto her toes to kiss him. She bit his lower lip, and he took the front of her tight black slacks and pulled her against him. He was playing it cool, but he was already hard, poking her through his khakis.
The shower was blasting for fifteen minutes. Time enough to drop her clothes and drape herself in a small fortune. The gun went on last. She liked the way the leather straps cinched around the high part of her thigh, liked the silver buckles and the black lines against her skin. She knelt on the bed in chains, diamonds sparkling between her breasts, a silver choker around her throat, and practiced aiming at herself in the mirror.
She was waiting when he came out in a towel, his chest glittering with beads of water. She lifted the gun in both hands.
“Drop that towel,” she said. “And do exactly what I say if you want to live.”
“Point it somewhere else,” he said.
She pouted. “It isn’t loaded.”
“That’s what everyone thinks, right up to the moment someone’s cock gets blown off.”
She opened the cylinder and spun it clickety-click, so he could see for himself it was empty. Then she slapped the cylinder back into the gun and pointed at him again.
“Get naked,” she said.
He still didn’t like her aiming the S&W at him—she could tell—but the sight of her breasts decorated with blazing diamonds was getting to him. He dropped the towel, his skinny cock bobbing in front of him (a sight both hilarious and thrilling) and crawled across the bed toward her. He kissed her, his tongue tasting her upper lip, and she was conscious of her composure and personhood sliding away in a familiar rush of want.
He pulled her down on the bed, using the gold chain and a fistful of her own hair, forcefully but not too rough. She managed to get the gun into the holster, just before he pushed open her legs with one knee. She must’ve strapped the S&W on too loosely. His thigh forced the butt of the gun back against her crotch.
Truth was, she never came harder than in those first few minutes, when he was kissing her, and her clit was grinding against the soft-hard rubber of the .357’s pearly grip. She went off like a pistol. The actual sex was just the recoil.
April 12, 2013
AT THE END OF HIS shift, Randall Kellaway let himself into the security office and found a sheriff’s deputy waiting for him, a grinning Latina in one of those ugly Hillary Clinton pantsuits, a Glock on her massive hip. You never saw white cops anymore; it was all about increasing diversity now. After Iraq, Kellaway had applied to the state police, the local police, the sheriff’s office, and the FBI and never so much as got an interview. State cops said he was too old; sheriff’s office wouldn’t hire him because he’d been AdSep’d; the feds told him there were suitability issues after he took their psych test; the local cops didn’t have any openings and reminded him he had nine hundred dollars in unpaid speeding tickets. What it came down to, a black guy who talked in ebonics could get hired if he had just managed to graduate high school without murdering someone in a drive-by. A white guy had to have matriculated at Yale and volunteered to work with orphans who had AIDS to even get a foot in the door.
When Kellaway entered the security office, he was on the customer side of the desk, with Officer Chiquita Banana. The receptionist, Joanie, was on the other side of the Plexiglas window, sitting in her rickety rolling office chair. There was one other security guard there, too, Eddie Dowling, taking off his belt and hanging it up in his locker. It was just like Ed to decide to call it a night ten minutes before quitting time.
“Here he is, Officer Acosta. I told you, he doesn’t clock out until the minute his shift ends. Mr. Kellaway is very punctual. Randy, this is Officer Acosta from the sheriff’s department—”
“I know where she’s from, Joan. I recognized the uniform.”
Folks from the police department and the sheriff’s office dropped in all the time. In January it had been to show him the mug shot of a wanted felon who was engaged to a girl who worked in the food court. In March it had been to warn him there was a known pedophile just down the road and to keep an eye out for him.
He was thinking it might be something about the black kid who had just started working at Boost Yer Game. A week ago Kellaway had found him carrying boxes out the Boost Yer Game service door and loading them into a rusty, rinky-dink Ford Fiesta. Kellaway had told him to get against the car and put his hands on the roof, had thought the kid was boosting his game by boosting some shoes. It was an hour before opening, and the boy wasn’t in uniform, and Kellaway had never seen his face, didn’t know he was a new hire, didn’t know the kid had been instructed to drive some fancy Nikes to the Boost Yer Game outlet in Daytona Beach. Naturally, now it looked like Kellaway was a racist and not a guy who’d made an honest mistake.
If it really had been a mistake. Kid had a bumper sticker said LEGALIZE GAY MARIJUANA, which was pretty much a raised middle finger to a world where rules mattered. Kellaway could hope that Acosta had come to tell him the kid was a known banger and she wanted to search his Fiesta for crack and guns. (And why, he wondered, did the most American of American car companies name one of their vehicles a Fiesta, which sounded more like a bargain meal at Taco Bell? Although probably the plant making those cars was in Tijuana, so the name actually suited.)
Just before Acosta spoke, though, Kellaway noticed the wan look on Ed Dowling’s face. He saw, too, that Joanie was willfully not looking at him, pretending to be interested in something on the screen of her antique Dell—Joanie, who inserted herself in the middle of every conversation and couldn’t bear to let any visitors to the office escape without forcing them to answer a dozen mindless questions about what they did, where they were from, and if they had seen last week’s Dr. Phil. Kellaway felt the briefest of misgivings, a kind of grim flicker, the psychological equivalent of dull, distant heat lightning.
“Let’s have it,” he said.
“You got it, darling,” said Acosta, and she slapped some folded papers into his hands.
His gaze skipped across blocks of text: TEMPORARY INJUNCTION FOR PROTECTION AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE and NOTICE OF HEARING and SCHEDULED TO APPEAR AND TESTIFY.
“You are instructed by the State of Florida not to physically approach Holly Kellaway, either at her current place of residence at 1419 Tortola Way or at her place of employment with the Tropic Lights Cable Network at 5040 Kitts Avenue, or to approach her son—”
“Our son.”
“—George Kellaway, at the Bushwick Montessori on Topaz Avenue. If you are found within five hundred feet of their place of residence, her place of employment, or your son’s school, you will be subject to arrest for violating this restraining order, are we clear?”
“On what grounds?”
“You’ll have to ask the judge at the hearing, the date of which—”
“I’m asking you. On what grounds can the State of Florida decide to keep me away from my own child?”
“Do you really want to do this in front of your co-workers, Mr. Kellaway?” she said.
“I never put a hand on the hysterical bitch. Or the boy either. If she says anything else, it’s lies.”
Acosta said, “Did you ever point a gun at her, Mr. Kellaway?”
He didn’t reply.
Joanie exhaled a snorting breath, like a tired horse, and began typing furiously, her eyes fixed on the screen of her computer.
“You’re going to want to call her,” Acosta said. “Don’t. You are forbidden to contact her directly. You want to say something to her? Get a lawyer. Have him say it. You’re going to want a lawyer for the hearing anyway.”
“So if I call to say good night to my six-year-old, someone’s going to arrest me? Should I hire a lawyer to call on a nightly basis to read bedtime stories to him?”
Acosta went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “You have been scheduled for a hearing. The date and time is in the injunction. If you do not appear at the hearing, you can expect the restraining order to be continued in force, indefinitely. You may attend the hearing with your legal counsel, or you may be a dumb-ass, it’s up to you. Now, you’ve been eating frozen dinners ever since your wife moved out, and you may be getting tired of them. Let me tell you, they’re better than what’s on the menu in the county jail. Take my advice and don’t put eyes on your ex until you see her at the hearing, got me?”
He felt sick. He felt like taking his chrome-handled flashlight to her fat, dykey face. She had a dyke haircut—could’ve been in the marines with a haircut like that.
“That it? We done?”
“Nope.”
He didn’t like the way she said it, didn’t like how happy she sounded.
“What else?”
“Do you have any guns here or in your car?”
“The fuck that matter?”
“You are instructed by order of the State of Florida to turn in your firearms to the sheriff’s department until a judge concludes it is safe for you to possess them.”
“I am a security guard,” he said.
“Do mall cops pack? Your co-worker wasn’t carrying when he walked in.” When Kellaway didn’t answer, Acosta looked through the window at Joanie and Ed. “Are you required to carry while you’re on the job?”
A strained quiet settled upon the room. The vending machine kicked on, a soft whump and a hum.
“No, ma’am,” Eddie Dowling said at last, grimacing and glancing apologetically at Kellaway.
“Are you even allowed to carry a gun?” she asked.
“Not in your first year, ma’am,” said Ed. “But after that, if you wear it discreetly, it’s not prohibited, ma’am.”
“Right,” she said, and looked back at Kellaway. “Are you packing now?”
Kellaway could feel a vein throbbing in the center of his forehead. She inspected him then, glanced at his belt—nothing attached to it except his walkie-talkie and his flashlight—then down along the length of his body and back up.
“What’s that on your ankle?” she asked. “That the Colt Python or the SIG?”
“How do you—” he started, then clenched his teeth together. Holly. The silly, fragile bitch had given the sheriff’s department a list of all his guns.
“Mr. Kellaway, would you please surrender your weapon? I’ll be glad to give you a receipt for it.”
For a long time, he just glared at her, and she smiled pleasantly back at him. Finally he put his foot up on the mustard-colored love seat against the wall, the one with the patched cushions, and yanked up his pant leg.
“Like anyone could carry a fucking Colt Python in an ankle holster. You ever seen a Colt Python?” he said, unbuckling the entire holster and wiggling it loose and pulling it off.
“It would be a pain in the ass with a full-size Python, but it’s doable if it’s the snub. Your ex wasn’t sure which you owned.”
He gave her the SIG. She briskly removed the mag, pumped the slide, and squinted into the chamber to make sure it was unloaded. When she was sure it was safe, she zipped it into a big clear plastic bag and put it aside on the Formica counter. She rummaged in her leather satchel, came up with a slip of paper, and squinted down at it.
“So is the Colt in your locker?”
“You got a warrant to find out?”
“I don’t need one. Not for that. I have permission from Russ Dorr, the CEO of Sunbelt Marketplace, the firm that owns this mall. You can call him yourself and ask if you’re wondering. Your locker isn’t your locker. It’s his.”
“What are you going to do if it’s not there? Follow me to my house? Better have a warrant for that.”
“We don’t need to go to your house, Mr. Kellaway. We’ve already been there. Your wife gave us a key and granted us permission to enter the premises, as is her right. She’s co-listed on the mortgage. But we didn’t find the Colt or the SIG”—she scanned the sheet of paper—“or the Uzi. Really? An Uzi? That’s some real Rambo shit, Mr. Kellaway. For your sake, I hope that hasn’t been converted.”
“It’s a legacy piece,” he said. “From 1984, grandfathered in. If your boys looked in my file cabinet, they would’ve found all the paperwork on it. It’s legal.”
“That must’ve cost some money. I guess patrolling the mall pays good. That right? You get top dollar making sure no one snatches a Cinnabon and runs for the doors?”
He opened his locker and got the Colt and handed it to her butt-first, the cylinder open. She shook the bullets out into the cup of her palm, spun the cylinder, and snapped it back into the frame with an agile flick of her wrist. It went into the plastic bag with the SIG. Acosta wrote him a receipt in a notepad that resembled what a waitress would use to take an order. That was what Acosta should’ve been doing, copying down orders in a Waffle House somewhere.
“The Uzi in the car?” she asked.
He was going to ask if she had a warrant, but as he opened his mouth, her gaze swept up and met his, and she looked at him with a benign calm he could hardly stand. Of course she had one. She was waiting for him to ask so she could show him up, humiliate him again.
She followed him down the long corridor, out the metal door, and into the parking lot. The late-afternoon sunshine always surprised him after he’d spent a day in the mall: the sharp-edged clarity of the world and the taste of the ocean in the air. Sheaves of palm leaves moved with a dry rustle. The sun was deep in the west, and the sky was shot with a smoggy golden light.
Acosta followed him across the blacktop. When she saw the car, she laughed.
“Really?” she asked. “I didn’t see that one coming.”
He didn’t look at her. His car was a bright red Prius. He’d bought it for the kid, because George was worried about the penguins. They went to see the penguins almost every weekend at the aquarium. George could watch them swim all day.
He opened the hatchback. The Uzi was in a black hard case. He entered the code, popped the locks, and stood back so she could have a look at it, placed neatly in its black foam cutouts. He loathed the Spanish woman and her butch haircut, and he was surprised to feel a certain pleasure anyway, letting her look it over, every piece of it oiled and black and so clean it might’ve been brand-new.
She wasn’t impressed, though. When she spoke, her voice was flat, almost disbelieving. “You leave a fully automatic Uzi in your car?”
“The firing pin is in my locker. You want it? I’ll have to go back and get it.”
She slammed the plastic case shut, got out her waitress check pad, and began to write once more.
“Read that restraining order, Mr. Kellaway,” she said, tearing off his receipt and handing it to him. “And if you don’t understand any of it, have a lawyer explain it to you.”
“I want to talk to my son.”
“The judge will make a provision for that, I’m sure, in fifteen days.”
“I want to call my boy and tell him I’m fine. I don’t want him to be afraid.”
“Neither do we. That’s why you’re holding a restraining order. Good afternoon, Mr. Kellaway.”
She took one step away with the black plastic case, and he threw the restraining order at her back, couldn’t help himself. It was that last bit, the thing about how she saw her job as protecting his son—from him. The papers struck her between the shoulder blades, like a dart. She stiffened, stood there with her back to him. Then she gently set the case with the Uzi in it down on the asphalt.
When she turned to face him, her smile was enormous. He wasn’t sure what would happen if she took the handcuffs off her belt, what he would do. But instead she only bent and picked up the papers and stepped toward him. Up close—when sh
e was only an inch away—he was surprised at her mass. She had the stocky density of a middleweight. She gently tucked the papers into his shirt pocket, where they sat nestled against his multitool in its little leather case.
“Now, hon,” she said, “you’re gonna want to hold on to those to show your lawyer. If you want visitation rights to see your kid—any rights to see your son at all—you’re going to want to know what you’re up against. You are lost in the woods, and this is the closest thing you got to a compass. Do you understand me?”
“Right.”
“And you’re going to want to avoid assaulting or threatening or harassing officers of the State of Florida who might lock your ass up and disgrace you in front of your colleagues and passersby and God and everyone. You might want to avoid troubling men and women of the law who could drop in on your hearing to talk about you throwing things and showing poor control of your emotions. Do you follow me?”
“Yeah. I got it. Any other questions?”
“No,” she said, and picked up the case with the Uzi in it and then paused to meet his gaze. “Yes. Actually. One. I asked you if you ever pointed a gun at your wife, and you didn’t answer me.”
“No, and I damn well won’t.”
“Okay. I was wondering something else, though.”
“What?”
“You ever point a gun at your son? Tell her if she tried to take him away, you’d put his brains on the wall?”
His insides boiled with sick, with acid. He wanted to throw something else, throw something in her face, bust her lip, see some blood. He wanted to go to jail—but if she locked him up, he’d lose his rights to George forever. He didn’t move. He didn’t reply.
It didn’t seem possible that Acosta’s smile could broaden any more, but it did. “Just curious, hon. Don’t do anything that’ll get you in trouble, y’hear? Because as much as I don’t want to ever see you again, you don’t want to ever see me again even more.”
