BIKER’S SURPRISE BABY Page 25

  I’m sat at the corner table, some soap opera playing on the small wall-mounted TV, when Carol comes in. Even now, after years of knowing her, it can be a shock when she walks into the room. For a second, I think: why is somebody carrying a mirror in here? Then I grin at my stupidity. Carol, looking like my slightly more carefree twin (her ponytail is a little looser) drops into the seat opposite me.

  “So I heard,” Carol says, her face difficult to read as she tears open a yogurt container with her teeth.

  “You heard? Really?” I’m so surprised by this that I drop my knife and fork. So we had the best sex I’ve ever had, and then he snuck out, and then he . . . what? Went and told Carol’s boyfriend, who then told Carol? Why would he do that? “Oh,” I say, but still, I’m not annoyed. It was fun. I don’t regret it. And I was going to tell Carol, anyway. So I guess it’s okay. As long as he doesn’t go around telling everybody who’ll listen, in which case we’ll need to have words. “Yeah, well—I know what you’re going to say. I told you so. You said I needed a good time, and you need to hear the words, don’t you, you psychopath? Fine, Carol, fine, I’ll play your wicked game. I had a good time. Okay? Understand?” I lower my voice. “I had a great time, if you get my meaning.”

  I giggle, expecting Carol to giggle along with me. She’s always ragging me about men, about fun, and now here I am, triumphant. But she doesn’t giggle. She squints at me, her hazel-brown eyes—eyes that could’ve been transplanted from my head, I swear—full of confusion. “Wait, what are you talking about?” she says.

  “I’m talking about Roman—well, Sam, as you called him. Are you sure your boyfriend’s his friend, Carol, because he told me his friends call him Roman. I went on that date, and I had a great time, and—Why are you looking at me like that?” I demand, as she continues to squint at me.

  “I heard,” Carol says, “that Sam had to cancel, but because of my idea not to give you his phone number, he had no way to contact you. I only heard about it at lunchtime. I expected you to be in a bad mood about being stood up. So, hang on . . . Roman?”

  I give her a quick rundown. When I finish, Carol asks me in a quiet, sensitive voice, “Are you okay?” Her quiet, sensitive voice cannot hide the laughter which she manages to contain only by bulging her cheeks like a hamster, though.

  “Yes,” I say. “I’m fine. You can laugh.”

  She laughs, and after a moment I laugh along with her.

  “It was crazy,” I say. “I . . . he was so smooth about it. He didn’t miss a beat when I asked him if he was Sam, and I even mentioned you, and he went right along with that, too. I thought I was a human lie-detector, Carol, I really did.”

  “Well, it seems you found somebody who is even more skilled than you,” Carol says, clearly delighted. “Are you really okay?”

  “Listen,” I say. “He was gorgeous, charming, and we had incredible sex. Surely that’s all that matters?”

  Carol nods in agreement, still smiling.

  But I won’t be able to reach him now, I reflect. I’m never going to see him again.

  Chapter Three

  Roman

  In my dreams, my mother appears like one of the Red Cross nurses in the First World War. I know that’s not how she was dressed, ever, but in my dreams—nightmares—it’s how I see her. She’s in that white get-up with the hood and the big Red Cross which tells the world she’s here to do good. I crouch low in the street, which is the only street, the only street which has ever existed: everything else is blackness, yawning out for miles and miles. I know the story, but as I crouch behind an overturned dumpster, it plays itself out, as it has played itself out a thousand times before.

  Mother, charging down the street in her Red Cross get-up, kneels beside the gang member and starts to mess with him, patching him up, telling him to breathe, all that horseshit. I’m back here rooted to the spot, but if I wasn’t I’d just run up ahead and curb-stomp that gang member into the ground. What’s a Red Cross lady doing out here? What business does she have in a fuckin’ warzone, patching up some gang scum? But she does it, and I watch, and somewhere faraway a grown man writhes and rolls over in bed next to the woman he just laid.

  The Red Cross Paramedic has almost got the gang member into a decent state when the cop and the rival gang member arrive. I never asked what gangs they were, ’cause the way I see it, who gives a damn? Gangs are gangs and they’ll always shoot each other, always kill each other, and anyway, both men involved died: one of his wounds; the other a few months later from another shootout. But now, the cop is skipping down the street, whistling, oblivious, and my mom is on her feet, screaming at the cop to get down. And then the rival gang member fires a slug right through the air, hitting the cop in the arm, and the Red Cross Nurse, instead of doin’ the goddamn smart thing and staying low and waiting for backup, just ups and runs toward the cop, and even manages to drag her to the other side of the street behind some steps, out of view of the gang member, and then she goes right ahead, fixing up the cop, bandaging the wound, and then, and then—

  I bolt upright when I wake, sweat pouring down me. For a moment, I almost let out a growl, but then I kill it. Lily is sleeping next to me, naked, her pert, tight breasts illumed in the moonlight. I think about cupping one of those breasts, but I don’t. She might wake up, and if she wakes up I’ll want to take her again, and again. She’s by far the bounciest, sexiest, fuckin’ angriest little thing I’ve ever fucked. All tense and wound up. Fit for bursting, and she did burst, all over me, time and time again. But morning is comin’, and I don’t plan on being here when morning comes. The dream—but I push the dream away. The dream can go to hell. Nothing good can come of the dream.

  I stand up quietly, and then go around the room picking up my clothes. She stirs, mutters something in her sleep, but she does not wake. I don’t reckon she will, either, after the way we went at each other. My cock is sore, my balls feeling drained . . . The best sex I ever had? I’ve had my fair share, but yeah, I reckon that was the best. Just thinking about it is getting my hard, so that when I buckle my jeans, my cock presses against the denim. Dressed, I stand over her for a few seconds, just staring. I could have this again, I tell myself. I could wake her up and go down between those lithe legs and lick that pussy until she comes, singing out her orgasm. But then I turn away. It might lead to other things, to other dates, to all that relationship shit.

  No, that ain’t for me. I make my way toward the door.

  I’m gripping the door handle when, behind me, Lily makes a sweet moaning sound. My cock somehow gets harder, pressing so firmly against my jeans it’s like the bastard wants to break out. But I can’t go back. It might lead to things I don’t need in my life. So I quietly turn the handle and walk into the hallway. I go down to the main desk, pay up for the room, and then get another room on a different floor of the hotel. I’m here for a reason, a reason that has nothing to do with Lily. As I ride the elevator to the top floor, where my new room is, I check my phone: no calls, no messages. But this Boss is always sporadic. Sometimes he’ll text me the second I walk through the door, sometimes it takes him a few days.

  When I get into the room I lock the door and throw myself on my bed. My body is aching, aching even as it doesn’t after a job. For such a lithe, small woman Lily sure did know how to work a man over. I touch my neck, where her teeth have left an imprint in my skin. I touch my cock, flaccid now, and wince at the punishment it’s been put through. The hardest, wildest fuck I’ve ever had in my life, make no mistake. The sun is beginning to rise, and I find myself just laying on my side staring at it. I don’t want to go back to sleep, ’cause then that dream might return. It’s a stupid dream. I wasn’t even there when Mom got herself killed saving some cop; I wasn’t even there when the gangbanger gunned her down. I thought about killing ’em afterward, though, when I knew what killing was . . . but by then it was too late, they were already long cold. I wince, roll over, face the wall.

  A pessimistic man would say I’ve
let the darkness throw me into the darkness. A pessimistic man would say I’ve let the acts of a devil turn me into a devil; Mom died, and now I go into the world to take other lives. But the thing with pessimistic men is that they’re always looking for the worst. Maybe Mom’s death was what set me on this path, but really I just need money, and a job, and a secure line of work, and . . . “Liar,” a voice whispers, far back in my head. My subconscious, maybe, or perhaps I’m just going mad. “If that was true, you would’ve retired a long time ago. Don’t forget how much cash you’ve got stowed away, Money Man.”

  I ignore the voice and roll over again, facing the sun once more. I want the phone to ring. I want to be about my work. The thing is, I believe there’s a balancing force in this world. God, or fate, or whatever folks want to call it, I reckon it’s there, an invisible hand. Or maybe I’m the hand, and I ain’t so invisible. Fuck it, I don’t know what fancy terms to clothe my beliefs in. The point is that this yin-and-yang tattoo on my arm isn’t just for show. I reckon that ’cause there are so many evil people killing innocents in this world, there’s gotta be some people killing evils. And that’s me. I’m not some dope-fiend hitman, I’m not some mafia tool, or any of that shit. I’m a clean, professional assassin, I work for the men behind the men in charge, and I only ever take out the trash: no innocents, nobody who doesn’t deserve a garrote around the throat.

  “Who are you trying to convince?” I mutter under my breath, rolling onto my back. “Who says the men you kill shouldn’t be turned over to the authorities instead? Who says the politicians you work for aren’t just using you as a pawn in a bigger game?”

  I laugh grimly to myself. This is what an honest assassin gets for thinking. It quickly turns to over-thinking. I pick up my cell, hold it inches from my face, staring at the screen. The sun has fully risen now, slanting into the room, glinting off the edge of the silver tray upon which lays complimentary champagne. Somewhere in this hotel, Lily is waking up, looking around the room, wondering where I am. She might still think I’m that Sam guy, whoever the hell that was. I had no clue what that was about, just went with it. I was walking across the bar just because she was damn hot and I wanted a piece, so when she offered up this Sam narrative, well . . . you know what they say about mouths and gift horses.

  But there was something else about that girl, too. I swear to God, I almost felt something for a second, amidst all the writhing, the biting, the fucking. I almost felt something that wasn’t just pleasure. Closeness, maybe? I laugh, but it sounds more like a growl. I must still be tipsy from last night. I’m thinking some stupid shit. An image enters my mind, which makes me laugh even more: me, sneaking into the hotel room after she’s left and before the maids have gone over it, scanning it for any sign of who she is and where she works, maybe she’s even left a phone number behind. I consider this for a few moments, and then shake my head. And then what? Start along the road which leads to picket fences and children and cats and dogs, the exact life Mom tried to make for us in the suburbs, and the life that was wrenched away by a gangbanger’s slug. No, no, no. Not for a man like me.

  I’m relieved when my cell finally buzzes. It means I can just focus on the work.

  “Hello,” I say. I add: “Boss.” I always just call them Boss, whoever they are, Democrat, Republican, businessman. Always just Boss, and I try not to look too deep into who they are or what they’re about. I guess that says a lot about me.

  “Hello,” the man says. He’s a politician, one of the good ones as far as I know, and he sounds skittish, as though afraid someone might walk in on him talking to me. I imagine him hunched over his grand desk, in his grand office, making this call. “Darius Taggart. He’s a war criminal. He’s been wanted by the United Nations for years, war crimes, you know . . . selling deadly poisons and chemical weapons to corrupt governments, mostly, but also some very nasty stuff, like throwing acid in the faces of—”

  “I know who he is,” I say, making sure to keep my voice level. It’s best this current Boss doesn’t know that once, a few years back, another Boss hired me to get Darius but Darius slipped my grasp; and especially that I spent a half-year trailing him after that and still had no luck. I’ve been looking for Darius for a long fuckin’ time, not out of any personal revenge, but just ’cause I never like to leave a job unfinished. “I mean, I’ve heard the name,” I add, to kill any suspicion.

  “This man must never stand trial,” Boss says. “Ever. He is evil, and sadistic—”

  “I’ve got the name. Understood. Make the payment in the usual way when the job is done.”

  “Okay, okay. Good. Thank you. Goodbye.”

  He hangs up, and I put my hands behind my head and rest my head in them, staring up at the ceiling. The ceiling is patterned, carved pictures of seashells and starfish gazing down at me. Darius, Darius fuckin’ Taggart. I shouldn’t get so angry thinking about him, but he really pisses me off. I nearly had him, back in the day, was in the same building with him when he slipped me. Made me look a damn fool, truth be told.

  I stand up, stretch my arms, my legs, work out the kinks from last night. No point reflecting on that last job now, anyway. I look down at my yin-and-yang tattoo and grin. Yeah, everything has a balancing force. Darius Taggart wants to throw acid in little girl’s faces and sell chemical weapons to despots? Fine, then that gives me free reign to go after him using my methods: my bloody, violent methods.

  When I leave my hotel room, I think again about Lily, about her fresh lipstick-colored cheeks, about her skillful hands, about her laughter, and the look of wild excitement in her wide hazel-brown eyes. I even think about that cute little cleft in her chin.

  By the time I’ve stepped onto the street, I’ve killed all thoughts like that.

  They ain’t for men like me.

  Chapter Four

  Lily

  June turns to July, and July to early August, and life goes on with the same routine: stitching, comforting, consoling, cleaning, changing. I pull doubles, triples, and most nights when I ride the bus home I am so exhausted that I just manage to put my clothes in the wash basket, take a quick shower, nuke a microwave meal before collapsing into bed. I give myself little time to think about anything: anything these days meaning Roman, the man who is swiftly becoming a ghost in my mind. Once the aches of our frantic sex have gone, once my body has recovered, I sometimes wonder if any of it really happened. Did I really go to bed with a stranger? Did I really go absolutely wild on him? Was he really as handsome as I remember?

  But these are questions which come either very late at night or very early in the morning, when I lay awake in the minutes before my alarm screams through the apartment. Apart from that, I am too busy to ask myself anything that might make me uncomfortable. I throw myself into my work with renewed vengeance, Nurse Sherlock patrolling the hallways with her hair scraped close to her scalp and her eyes burning with the desire to help. Yep, that’s me, and I don’t need a man named Roman and a yin-and-yang tattoo and the irresistible touch of his hands on my body.

  “But damn, it’s hot today,” I mutter one morning, as I go into the breakroom to stow away my lunch. It’s only nine o’clock and the temperature is already reaching the high eighties. My scrubs stick to my body and the air conditioning is like the breath of a chesty child, breathing pitifully into the massive building.

  But as I look around, I see that nobody else seems to be having as hard a time as I am. It is hot, but most people—even the larger nurses—seem to find the AC sufficient. I shrug, and go about my work. Maybe I’m just overreacting. If women twice, three times my size are pacing up and down the hallways and only just barely breaking a sweat (no more than usual) then surely I can do the same. For the next few hours, I make sure not to change my behavior because of the heat. Nobody else is.

  But as the day wears on toward my first break, and as the heat outside gets angrier and angrier—aiming all its energy at me, apparently, because everybody else is skipping the hallways as sprite-like
as ever—I feel sickness rising in my belly, a churning, rolling sickness; it feels like water rolling over and over in my belly. I ignore it, because I’m not about to let a little sickness interfere with me doing my job. I have ten hours left yet, and it’s a busy day, so I won’t abandon the other nurses by slinking home just to lie in bed with an icepack on my head.

  I keep up this brave attitude until a boy comes in with a cut on his head. It’s a normal cut. The kid just fell down the stairs. A fine slice across his forehead. I go about cleaning it up, telling him it’ll be okay, telling him he’s a champion, trying my best to ignore the flustered mother who paces up and down and breathes heavily as though her boy has not just received a minor cut to the head but a gigantic gash. The boy himself is calm, just staring blandly ahead with a vaguely embarrassed look, as though his mother is prone to causing scenes like this. It’s not even the cut which sets me off; it’s the mother. There’s something off-putting about the way she paces back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and though I try to ignore it, my eyes invariably track her, even if subconsciously. Back and forth, like I’m sitting in a boat, rocking, rocking, and my belly, and—