by A. J. Downey
“Where’d you get that?” I asked, getting off my bike under the overhang and whipping my goggles off over my head as soon as I could get them off my face. They did the job and I needed them, but I didn’t like them.
“One of your boxes,” he answered. “All sorts of dishes and things in there. All like this.”
“Jesus, that must have cost a fucking fortune!” I said. I knew what the handmade pottery pieces around here went for and it wasn’t cheap.
“Full service for eight,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t think it cost her much but time, Son. I think she made them.”
“No shit?”
“Wipe your boots before you go in that house!” he called after me sternly like I was twelve. I stopped in the mudroom, excited to see what was sitting on the table through the back door, but not so excited I was gonna tromp a mess through the place.
I hung my jacket and cut to dry and pulled off my chaps to hang next to the other leather, all of it supple with how waterlogged it was. I pulled off my boots for good measure and went into the kitchen in my sock feet. Sure as shit, here was all this handmade dishware stacked and scattered over the dining table, the cupboards open and our old dishes coming out of the cabinets to make way for ‘em.
“Odin’s beard,” I said in awe, picking one of the heavy pieces up.
“She left that for you.” My pops gestured with his coffee mug at a white rectangle on the tabletop. I picked it up, and he leaned his shoulder against the back doorway and took a sip of his ever-present coffee. He’d ditched the cigar out back somewhere. The card read…
Clayrity Studios
Aspen Lawson-Craig
The address was in Seattle, on Airport Way – I had to bet Georgetown. There was a number, but I was betting it was a business line. I pulled my phone out of my back pocket where I’d stuck it when I’d hung up my coat and unlocked it.
I dialed her up and waited as it rang through.
“Clayrity Studios, this is Amber, how can I help you?”
“Uh, yeah, is Aspen there?” I asked.
“She’s teaching a class right now, is there something I can help you with?”
I cleared my throat and said, “Uh, no, just tell her that Fen… er, Fenris called, would you do that for me?”
I could hear Amber’s smile in her voice. “Absolutely! You want to leave a number or does she have it?”
“She should have it, but just in case…” I rattled off my cell.
“Okay.” She repeated it back to me.
“That’s correct,” I said.
“Alright Mr. Fenris, I have this all down and she’ll get back to you as soon as possible, okay?”
“Alright, thanks,” I said.
“Of course!”
The line went dead and I let my gaze wander over all the fine dishes and shook my head. This was way too much.
“First time anyone you brought home from Mitch’s like that has done anything like this,” my dad said coming fully into the kitchen.
“I see you wasted no time,” I said with a grin and he grinned back.
“It’s good shit, better ‘n’ what we got.”
“True that,” I said nodding.
“Right, so get to work, boy.”
I laughed a little and helped clear cabinets and hand washed the new dishes before putting them away.
“She’s got talent if she made these,” my dad observed.
“I don’t think it’s an ‘if,’ looks like she runs a whole damn pottery studio.”
“Yeah? Nice.”
“What’d you think of her?” I asked my dad, and he raised a bushy steel gray eyebrow at me.
“Seems like a lost soul,” he said carefully. “Seems like a good girl.” He eyed me equally carefully as when he’d spoken. When I didn’t say anything, he asked me, “Why, what you thinkin’?”
“Nothing, Pops. I don’t know…”
He harrumphed and shook his head, “Your mom was a good girl when I met her and I broke her damn heart.” He slid up onto one of the breakfast bar’s tall chairs and wrapped his hands around the big mug he’d pilfered from the pile before I could even get a look at all of it.
“You went to prison,” I said with a sigh. “Mom knew what she was signing up for when she married you,” I reminded him.
“Did she, though?” he asked and stared off into nothingness.
“Do I think she had herself convinced you’d never get pinched for nothing? Yes. Do I think she fell apart when you did?” I remembered. I’d been about seven, my sister nine or ten. It’d been ugly – Mom left scrambling, but a lot of that had been her fault. The club had tried to take care of us, but she’d blamed them as much as she’d blamed my pops, so she wouldn’t take their money.
“Shit fell apart,” my dad said in a tone that brooked no argument.
“Yeah.” I nodded a little sadly. “Yeah, they did.”
My dad had served eight years, and my sister had headed off to college right before he’d gotten out. Mom wouldn’t let my ass see him at first, but then Lacy had died and she couldn’t stop me if she wanted to.
My pops had been the path to revenge, but I’d carried most of it out on my own.
“You want my opinion, or don’t you?” he asked, and I shook my head.
“Naw, man, I don’t.”
He nodded carefully and said with a grunt and a sigh getting up, “Then you already know what it is and you know I’m right. You just don’t wanna hear it.”
I hissed out a disgruntled chuckle and carried on washing and rinsing the bowl I had in my hands.
“Either get over here and dry or fuck off,” I told him.
“And away I go,” he said with a shrug, and he fucked off toward the living room. That’s just the way we were. Brothers via the club more than father and son, then again, he hadn’t been around to be a father much after he’d been sent up.
I was just finishing up drying and stacking things in the cupboards when my phone rang. I picked it up from where it was blaring Wardruna on the kitchen counter and answered it, even though it was an unknown number. I had a sneaking suspicion I knew who it was.
“Hello?”
“Hi.” Her voice was soft and nervous at the same time. She cleared her throat and said, “Amber said you called?”
“Yeah, I’m here washing up these dishes, getting ‘em put away. I wanted to say thank you, they’re real nice. Definitely way too much, though. You shouldn’t have.”
“You didn’t have to do what you did either,” she murmured, and I chuckled.
“You’re not the first, baby. You won’t be the last, either. That’s just to say it’s what I do.”
“Oh, well, you’re a kind man, Fenris… consider it a kindness for a kindness.”
“You make these?” I asked abruptly, dying to know.
“Oh, yeah… it didn’t exactly come up in conversation, but it’s what I do.” She laughed a little nervously and said, “It was one of the few things my mom and I could bond over.”
“I know that feeling,” I said and glanced behind me at the open archway into the living room. I couldn’t see my dad seated in his chair with the back of it to the other side of the wall that separated the dining area from the living room. I knew he was listening. I would have been listening too.
“Anyway, I hope you enjoy them,” she said, and I chuckled.
“Dad had his coffee in one of the cups before I could even ride up. The man never met a coffee mug he liked until yours,” I said. “Just nothing out there big enough.”
“I could make a bigger one,” she said laughing, and I laughed with her.
“No, God, please no,” I said.
“Well, alright then. I would have happily taken the challenge.”
Seemed to me she had plenty of those lately, I didn’t want to add any others so as much as I wanted to get to know Ms. Aspen Lawson, I took my dad’s warning to heart and let this long ship pass me by.
“I’m sure you would have, b
ut there’s no need. Like I said, this was really too much. I didn’t do anything special.”
“On the contrary,” she said softly. “You did. At least to me. Thanks for reinforcing my faith in humanity.”
“Shit, I wouldn’t want to do that, now,” I joked.
“Why not?” she asked curiously.
“Because then you might really get hurt. Just do me a favor,” I said. “Stay safe for me.”
There was a long pause and finally a reserved, “I’ll do that.”
“Right, well, call me if you need anything,” I said. “I mean it.”
“I will. Thank you again, Fenris.” She said my name like she was still trying to get used to it.
I smiled and said, “You too, Aspen. Have a good night.”
“You too.”
I listened to the line go dead and sighed.
I really found myself wanting to get to know this woman, but my dad was right. She just didn’t seem the type to be able to handle the life and I couldn’t change. It would leave my brother’s in a lurch.
I set my phone aside and went back to work on cleaning up the smooth, earthenware dishes.
Four or five days later and I still couldn’t get Aspen out of my mind. It was driving me nuts, and I finally broke.
“Hey, D.T.” The big man looked up from his phone, his beer sitting frosty but untouched nearby on the bar.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Take a short ride with me?”
He frowned, looked around and asked, “How short?”
“Georgetown.”
“What’s in Georgetown?”
“Man, never mind.” I shook my head.
“Man, don’t be like that! Little Bird is on her way back. I don’t want to leave before she gets here,” he said.
“Oh. Well, she can ride with us on this one,” I said. “It’s nothing sketch.”
“Why you being all cagey?” he asked with a grin. I shrugged and didn’t say anything. I didn’t want the rest of the guys to give me a ration of shit, and I didn’t want to ride past her shop by myself. If we rode past, the pair of us, then it wouldn’t look like I was being a creepy stalker fuck… which yeah, okay, I was sort of being a creepy stalker fuck, what of it?
Dump Truck turned around more fully and fixed me with a look. I cocked my head and gave him a warning glare and his eyebrows went up. He held up his hands in surrender and cocked his head just as Little Bird came in the back door.
“Hey, baby,” she called and the smile he had for her was something else.
“That’s my line,” he said, pulling her into the circle of his arms and laying one on her. She giggled and twined her arms around his neck and not for the first time – I was jealous.
“Wanna take a ride with me and Fen to Georgetown?” he asked her. She drew her head back in confusion.
“What’s in Georgetown?” she asked.
“Fen won’t tell me,” he said, and she glanced in my direction and gave a shrug.
“Not like we have anything else going on tonight, so sure, let’s go.”
I stood up, my own beer half empty and forgotten on the coffee table in front of the couch I’d been sitting on.
“Alright then, let’s go.”
We rode down Roxbury, got over the First Ave. S. bridge and took the exit onto Michigan. I followed it all the way to Airport Way and hung a left, Dump Truck and Little Bird keeping pace and following my lead. I slowed down to a cruise and checked out Clayrity as we rode by. The lights were on, but dim. Shelves lined the walls all the way around the space with long tables set up.
I glimpsed Aspen behind the register, a mousy young thing chatting with her as she did the night’s paperwork. It was a hell of a candid look and for whatever reason, it just made me want to know the woman more.
I pulled up down the block, flipping an illegal U-turn in the middle of the block to back in against the curb in front of the Jules Maes Saloon. Dump Truck followed suit and killed the engine to his bike the same time I did.
“Okay, brother, enough of the cloak and dagger bullshit. Why you so suddenly interested in fuckin’ pottery?”
“He’s not,” Little Bird said, grinning, lifting off her lid. “I’d say it was the blonde, if I had to guess.”
I tapped my index finger against the tip of my nose and Little Bird grinned.
“No shit? You? Going to any kind of trouble over a woman? This I gotta hear.” D.T. pulled his cane from the bracket built onto his bike and heaved himself into a standing position with a wince.
“I need alcohol for this story,” I grated, and he gestured with a sweeping hand to lead the way.
We went into Jules Maes. A lot of the local hipster scene and old barflies startled, straightening up when they realized a couple of Sacred Hearts had walked in. The bartender, a white chick in her mid to late twenties who was tatted and pierced to within an inch of her life, her long hair dyed a vibrant green and laying along her back in thick dreadlocks, called out, “Take a seat anywhere, I’ll come around to get your order.”
“Thank you, kindly,” Dump Truck said with a disarming smile. Little Bird wrapped both of her slender arms around one of D.T.’s and I jerked my head at a nearby booth. Dump Truck nodded and gave me the option of putting my back to the wall so I could keep an eye on the door and who was coming in.
“Thanks,” I grunted.
“I know you got me,” he said. I nodded, and we settled in.
“So, what’s the deal?” Little Bird asked, smiling faintly with good humor, kindness radiating from her lovely eyes.
“Took the words right out of my mouth, babe. How’d you and blondie in the pottery shop go about meeting up?” Dump Truck asked, raising his eyebrows high enough they met the swath of red bandana across his forehead, holding back his long hair and keeping it neat under his lid when we’d rode.
“Happened a week or two back,” I declared. “She came into Mitch’s place with a friend of hers. Friend hooked up with a couple of cowboy posers and left Aspen drunk as fuck and stranded without her phone or a ride.”
“That’s fucked up,” Little Bird uttered, and I smiled. We’d been a bad influence on her in a couple ways – her letting fly with the f-bomb regularly being one of them but then again, the girl had needed to loosen up some. She certainly hadn’t been in Kansas anymore once D.T. had picked her ass up from Vegas.
She’d been a good girl. It was kind of why I wanted to talk to them both. See if there was a chance worth taking when it came to Aspen for one, and for two, getting some kind of advice on how or if I should proceed.
“That’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
I told them everything, pausing only long enough to get our drink order in and once again when the bartender returned to serve it up.
“That’s… that’s a lot.” Little Bird leaned back against the high wooden booth back and gave me one long, slow blink.
“I don’t really know what to think,” I said. “About the dishes. Like, am I supposed to make the next move or was that like, the end – thanks but I never want to see you again kind of a thing? I just don’t know.”
“Yah got me,” Dump Truck said with a shrug of his massive shoulders.
“I figured if anyone would know, it’d be you with all the romance novels and bullshit you read.”
He laughed and gave me the finger from across the table, and I grinned savagely.
“I don’t think she knows what she wants.” Little Bird said. “I mean, it sure puts my situation into some perspective. I don’t even know how she’s standing after all of that! First her mom, then her brother, and I know her husband didn’t die but yikes! Talk about the icing on the cake! Her whole life went down in flames one thing right after the other, after the other, with no time to process.”
Little Bird looked like she had a fractured heartache going and it made me love her just a little more that she could feel so strongly a sense of empathy for someone she didn’t even know. She was a rare one, an
d she and my best friend just fit in a way I couldn’t begin to describe and as much as I wanted that for myself… I just didn’t know if it was meant to be. Not with some of the shit that I’d done.
“She’s had no time to process,” I agreed and traced a runic pattern with a fingertip in the spilled beer foam from my lager on the warm golden lacquered wood of our table.
“So, give her time,” Dump Truck said judiciously.
I gave him a dirty look. I mean, clearly, he was right but how the fuck long? I turned back to Little Bird who gave me an apologetic look and a little shrug.
Neither one of them had the answer I was looking for. I guess that made three of us.
“Mind helping me out sometime?” I asked her and she gave me a raised eyebrow.
“Like how?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “Like go into the shop and feel things out in a few days or something?”
She smiled and said, “What, like you pay for a paint night for me, Marisol, and Dahlia?” she asked sweetly, and I scowled.
“Why you gotta bring those two into it?” I demanded. I liked ‘em both well enough but they were a couple of hard cases.
“Because they’re my friends and you’re asking me for the favor. You know I’m a lover not a fighter,” she said with a wink. “And I like to spread the love.”
Dump Truck chuckled.
“You been taking lessons in manipulation from Dahlia?” I asked.
“Chess, not checkers,” she said softly and her gaze unfocused as she stared over in the direction of the bar. “And no, these particular lessons were learned a long time ago in my old life.”
I nodded, my irritation diminishing.
“Fine,” I grated out. “If I don’t come up with a better plan, or I don’t hear from her first in like a week, I’ll pay for your girls’ night or whatever.”
“Thank you!” she said cheerfully and perked up in her seat. “I’ve always wanted to do a ceramic paint night with some girlfriends. It’s just not something you do all on your own.”
