Molls Like It Hot

by Darren Dash

  “I can see where this is going,” Toni murmured. “Her people found out and butchered her.”

  “No,” I sighed. “It wasn’t that simple. In a way I wish it was.”

  Jim Dancing James was one of my fellow soldiers. We’d never got along. There are some people in this world who just rub you up the wrong way, and James was one of those. We’d prickled at one another when we first met, and our mutual dislike had grown into full enmity over the months and years. Being totally honest, it wasn’t a one-way street. This wasn’t a bad guy/good guy situation, at least not for a long time. I gave as spitefully as I got, and did as much as he did to fan the flames of animosity between us.

  Every verbal exchange involved one of us sneering at the other. We’d had a few proper fights, but there’d been no clear winner — he’d been a boxer too, an equal match for me, and his nickname dated back to the way he used to dance round the ring. We’d probably have continued in that petty, largely harmless fashion until our superiors noticed and shipped one of us off to another unit, but then James took the unwarranted and shocking decision to escalate hostilities.

  “I did my best to keep my relationship with Zahra secret,” I told Toni. “I knew I’d be moved if word leaked.”

  But Dancing James found out. Something aroused his suspicions – maybe I’d stopped reacting to his jibes, making him wonder why I was smiling all the time instead of scowling – and he started shadowing me. I was blissfully unaware of the surveillance and carried on as normal. He saw me meet with Zahra and trailed us around. He noted our secret meeting places, the rooms in isolated areas where we would get together whenever we could.

  He hatched a plan to destroy me.

  “We were on patrol,” I said, tears rolling down my cheeks, crying as freely as Toni had earlier. I hadn’t told anyone this story in its entirety. I’d been carrying it with me since the desert, like Christ lugging his cross, and assumed I’d carry it unvoiced for the rest of my life. “Someone had given us a tip-off, sent us to a building outside the city where we were based. It was one of the buildings where Zahra and I used to meet.”

  I didn’t know it was her at first. There was a woman’s corpse strapped to a chair in the middle of the room, but it could have been any woman. Much of her face had been burnt and carved open. All the fingers of her left hand had been amputated. Her clothes had been removed and her breasts had been amputated too. Even though this was a familiar building, I didn’t think (didn’t want to think) that the woman in the chair might be my lover. We hadn’t been scheduled to meet. No reason why it should be her remains and not some other woman’s.

  Then Dancing James leant over and whispered in my ear, “Look familiar?”

  And straightaway I saw it all. It was Zahra. James had found out and tortured and killed her. He’d made it look like the work of her own people, but I could tell from his smirk that it had been him.

  Toni’s eyes were round but she didn’t say anything. Another person would have been shocked, would have asked how anyone could be that vile, how a man could kill an innocent woman just to hurt a guy he didn’t like. But Toni moved in circles where this wouldn’t come as a surprise. She’d seen the underbelly of the world and knew what certain sick people were like, how they sometimes killed for no good reason, just because they wanted to draw a reaction, just because they could.

  In that building in the desert, I broke ranks and threw myself at Zahra, clutched her tight, howled like a madman, tried to scream life back into her shattered, wretched form. The other members of my unit hung back, stunned, not sure what was going on.

  Distraught, I drew my gun and turned to target Dancing James, to kill him as he had killed the love of my life. But he’d anticipated that and was ready for me. Clubbed me senseless. Handcuffed me. Laughed as I was led away, leaving Zahra behind for a stranger to untie and examine and dispose of.

  I fell silent. Toni gave me a hug and I smiled at her through my tears.

  “Did you report him?” she asked.

  “No,” I sobbed. “There was no point. I couldn’t prove anything.”

  “Did you kill him?” she pressed.

  I stopped crying. Started wiping the tears away. Stared over her head and said nothing until I was back in control of myself.

  “I was released early from my contract,” I said. “My commanding officers weren’t stupid. They realised I’d had an affair with the dead woman, though they didn’t know about James’ role in her torment and execution. They thought she’d been killed by her own lot and I didn’t try to convince them otherwise. They felt sorry for me, and when they saw that I couldn’t continue, they made it easy for me to bail.”

  I wiped away the last of the tears and smiled weakly at Toni. “What you went through tonight… it’s awful, something you’ll never be able to forget. But as hard as this might be to accept right now, it could have been a lot worse.” I stroked her face tenderly. “They didn’t rape you. And you’re alive.”

  “You think that’s a good thing?” she sniffed.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Maybe I’d be better off dead,” she croaked.

  I shook my head. “You’re strong, like Zahra was strong. You’ll find a way to live with this, the way she would have, no matter what James did to her. Only she was never given that chance.”

  Toni stared at me, tears welling up in her eyes again.

  “I wish someone loved me the way you loved her,” she moaned.

  I touched her nose playfully.

  “Don’t be so sure that maybe they won’t, one day,” I said gently.

  She trembled when I said that, and clung to me, and started sobbing again, but this time not quite as desperately as before.

  “Can I confess something?” she asked.

  The sun was now high in the sky – another scorcher of a day – but it was cool in the shade of the damp old building. I’d gone for a walk earlier, found a shop, bought a few bottles of water and something to eat. I had to hold the plastic cups for her when she was drinking, as her hands were too sore to grip.

  “Fire away,” I said.

  “I thought you were one of them.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “When they came to the apartment and took me. I thought you’d left me for them, that you were in league with Smurf Mironova. I hated you more than any of the others. Even when they were beating me and cutting me, you were the one I wanted to kill the most. I thought you’d betrayed me.”

  I stared at her solemnly. “And when I showed up?”

  Her head hung low. “I thought you’d come to take your turn when they started,” she whispered.

  “No,” I said softly. “I would never…”

  “I know that now,” she cried, “but in the room, when I saw you coming through the door and thought that was a sign that the torment was about to kick up a level, I almost abandoned the fight. That was nearly the final nail in this coffin.”

  She tapped the side of her head and turned to look at me directly.

  “I’d suffered monstrously, and assumed worse was to come. It would have been easy to go crazy, to retreat into full-blown madness and lose myself. But I clung in there, memorising the faces of my abusers, telling myself I’d escape and come back to kill them all. I purposely held on to my mind and my humanity. I knew it would haunt me forever but I was determined not to let them break me. I didn’t want to give the bastards the satisfaction of seeing me crack. No matter what they did to me, they couldn’t truly get to me. They didn’t hurt me here.”

  She touched her left breast, her heart.

  “But when I saw you…” she went on. “When you came in, and I saw your face rising like a sorry-looking moon behind that fucker’s arse, and I thought you were there to rape me, to laugh, to watch and help record it… I nearly crumbled. I came that close–” she held her fingers millimetres apart, “–to losing my mind, my heart, my hope.” She smiled wanly. “My soul, if it isn’t already a blackened, shrive
lled kernel of a thing after all that I’ve done in my life.”

  She touched my hand, maintaining eye contact. “You mattered to me, Eyrie Brown. The rest were beasts but you were human. I hated you with everything I had in that moment, but you mattered. Understand?”

  I could only stare, nod wordlessly and caress her battered hand.

  When the pain got very bad, I remembered her love of movies and turned talk to Tony Curtis and Some Like It Hot. Hard drugs were what she really needed, but we had to make do with what we had.

  “Remember when he met Marilyn on the beach?” I asked as she shivered and sweated, her hands balled into pitiful fists. “He put on a terrible English accent, pretended to be the owner of Shell, and she believed him, and –”

  “Cary… Grant,” Toni gasped.

  “What?”

  “He was… pretending to be Cary Grant. Acting like him, aping the way… he spoke. Taking the… piss.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I didn’t know that.” I chuckled. “Sly old Tony.”

  She grimaced as another wave of pain hit. I hurried into the next anecdote and we talked about the shaking of the maracas. I was able to tell her that had been the director Billy Wilder’s idea, to allow the audience time to laugh before the next line, and I told her a bit more about him, because she only knew about the stars, had never taken much of an interest in directors or writers.

  We tried thinking of the old actor’s name, the guy with the killer line at the end of the movie – “Nobody’s perfect” – but drew a blank. Couldn’t even name another film that he’d been in. We also couldn’t think of any other movie where such a great final line had been given to a peripheral character.

  It was meaningless chatter but it helped distract her. She was in pain, in shock. Her pupils would dilate every so often and she’d stiffen. Her fingers would twitch as if she was being pumped full of electricity. She was handling it better than most people would have, but you don’t get over something like what she’d been through in a hurry, no matter how tough you are.

  “Did you know Tony Curtis invented rap?” I asked when she started to shake again.

  “What?” she gawped.

  “That’s what he believed anyway. I read it in an interview. See…”

  And it diverted her attention. And I told another story after that. And another. And kept on going, as long as I had to, as long as it helped.

  I moved the plastic cup away from her lips. I was making sure she drank a lot of water. We used one of the corners in the next room as a toilet. I’d carried her there the first few times, but she was starting to get some strength back and was able to make the trip by herself in the afternoon.

  She licked a couple of stray drops of water from her lips. Her eyes met mine and she smiled. “You would have made a good nurse.”

  “Maybe I’ll retrain.”

  She laughed softly, then the smile faded. Her gaze stayed locked on mine.

  I could feel my heart picking up speed. It would have been simple and natural. Just a kiss, nothing else. Almost as innocent and meaningless as the peck on the cheek I’d given to Lucy before I departed.

  I felt my head angling towards hers, my lips opening as hers were opening.

  I stopped.

  Sat back.

  Shook my head.

  “No, Toni.”

  “No?”

  She looked down at her ravaged body, thinking at first that I was rejecting her because of her wounds and humiliation. Then it clicked and she gave a little sigh.

  “Because of Lewis?” she pouted.

  “Because of Lewis,” I confirmed.

  “He doesn’t matter. After what we’ve been through, what you did for me…”

  “I only did my job.”

  I hated the words even before they’d left my mouth, but they had to be said. She was a gangster’s moll, as they would have phrased it in an old movie like Some Like It Hot. Wouldn’t be much point in my saving her if I let something dumb like this happen. We’d both be up to our necks in it then, in an even worse situation than we were right now.

  “I was paid to look after you. And I did. And that’s all there is between us. All there ever can be.”

  She nodded wearily. “I guess you’re right,” she said softly. “I’m pretty confused at the moment. I suppose I’d feel close to anyone who’d done me such a good turn. I misread the look in your eyes, seeing what I wanted to see.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, feeling my heart burn in my chest, knowing she knew she’d misread nothing. I wanted her. As the old saying goes, to have and to hold. But she couldn’t be mine any more than Zahra could be, and I’d just have to learn to live with her absence, as I’d learnt to live with the absence of that other great love of my life. Hell, it was way too early to even assume that Toni would or could have been a great love, so I’d miss her a lot less than I missed Zahra.

  Or so I told myself.

  So I tried to believe.

  Toni was silent a while. Then she said, “You think we’ll ever meet again?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You ever want to meet again?”

  I didn’t answer for a long beat. Then, “Here,” I said. “Have another drink.”

  “I just had one.”

  I held the rim of the cup to her cracked lips.

  “I know.”

  And she could tell I wanted her to stop speaking, because this conversation was tearing me apart inside. So she drank, and we lay there saying nothing, but I was all too painfully aware that more was being said in that silence than we perhaps could ever have said with words.

  Later, she rose and stretched. Staggered, then found her footing. Took a couple of deep breaths and bent over. Touched her toes. Stood. Went through the routine a few more times. Swung her arms from left to right, wincing, teeth gritted, but forcing her body to obey her command. Taking back control.

  “Better?” I asked.

  She grunted. “They gave me some going over, but I don’t think anything’s damaged inside.”

  “You’ll need a doctor to determine that.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “You think you’ll be able to make the meet?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Will Brue understand when I explain what happened?”

  She nodded. “He’s probably already heard. If not, or if he’s only been told part of the story, we’ll fill him in. When I tell him what you risked, how you saved me, he’ll appreciate the guts it took. He won’t blame you for what they did to me. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “If I hadn’t left you tied up…” I muttered.

  She scowled. “Well, yeah, obviously that was your fault.” She laughed. “But we all make mistakes. Like I said earlier, I won’t ever forgive those bastards for what they did – and I will make them pay – but you… yeah, you, I forgive.”

  I smiled at her but inside I was cold, because I couldn’t forgive myself. I should never have left her. Brue was at fault too, for telling me to come to his place and leave her where she was. But I was her bodyguard. I’d been paid to protect her. I should have taken all possible precautions, regardless of what my employer told me. It would be easy to pass the blame, but I wouldn’t give myself that get-out. I’d let her down and that would eat away at me forever.

  Then again, if I’d stayed, I might have been taken by surprise by Smurf and his men, caught with my back to the wall. I could have ended up with her in the room in that building behind the casino, both of us on the receiving end of a chain of indiscriminate rapists. And there’d have been no rescue then, for either of us.

  “When do we leave?” she asked.

  I checked my watches. “Another couple of hours.”

  “That long?” She sighed. Then, after stealing a look in my direction, she added with a wry, sad little smile, “That soon?”

  We talked about our lives, our childhoods, growing up, old lovers. She already knew about Zahra, bu
t I told her about the other ladies there’d been, none as important to me as Zahra, but each meaningful in some way.

  Toni’s life was more convoluted than mine. There wasn’t time to cover more than a fraction of it, but she filled me in on the main points. She’d had to mature fast or go under. Her father a small-time crook on the English side of the Scottish Borders. He’d never paid much attention to her, in and out of prison as she was growing up. Her mother not much more of a home-maker, revelling in open affairs, sometimes going off for weeks or months at a time with the men she fell for. Went one night when Toni was eleven and never came back. Toni searched for her later in life but never did find out if she ran away to establish a new life with a lover or met with a messy end.

  She grew into a wild teenager who caused trouble wherever she went. Heading for the same sort of downward spiral as her father. Then she met a guy who trained her how to focus her rage and energy. He’d been a surrogate father, an instructor, eventually a lover. Taught her how to fight, how to live, how to kill.

  He introduced her to Brue when she was seventeen. She did some jobs for the London-based gangster. An impressed Brue called her his child assassin. He made a few passes at her but she was true to her mentor and Brue respected that, never overstepped the mark.

  Her saviour died in a car accident when she was days shy of her nineteenth birthday. A hit and run victim. Impossible to tell if it had been an accident or if it had been arranged by one of his enemies — people like them always had enemies who were keen to settle old scores, and question marks had to be employed every time one of them fell prey to an “accident.”

  Brue proved to be a rock for her while she was grieving, and they’d grown closer over the following months, though they never did become lovers. She moved to London to work for him. Great times for a while, but she was forced to flee the city after some nasty encounters with Jeb Howard. She set up as an independent operator and her and Brue stayed in touch. He passed scraps of work her way every now and then, if they didn’t involve her having to travel to London, and their paths had crossed occasionally over the years, in cities like Cardiff, Glasgow, Paris, Berlin.