The Hard Bounce

Chapter Sixteen

We all needed a change of clothes. The three of us were soaking wet, blood-streaked, and beat the hell up. The cuff of Junior’s pant leg also had a hole charred through it.

I switched out of my own ruined clothes and gave Junior one of my T-shirts. It was a size and a half too small for his bulk and made him look like an overstuffed sausage. The pants were the right waist size, but he had to roll up the legs. Cassie changed into an old Bosstones T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. I figured the drawstring could make up for the massive difference in size. Junior and I waited for her in the kitchen while she changed in the bathroom.

“Going clam digging?” I asked.

“Bite me.” Junior sniffed disapprovingly at the coffee I was brewing. “Amateur,” he grumbled.

“Sorry. It’s all I got.”

“Chock Full O’Nuts? Why don’t you just drink Folger’s instant, ya faggot.”

Before I could answer, Cassie shuffled out of the bathroom, her wet clothes wadded up in her arms.

“Feel better?” I took the dirty garments from her.

“Thanks. Dryer, at least,” she mumbled. She wouldn’t meet my eyes, instead taking in the majesty of my dirty kitchen tile.

“You two chill in the living room. I’ll be right with you.” The dressing on my bite needed changing. A little disinfecting couldn’t hurt either. I went into the bathroom with a bottle of vodka and long strips of cloth I’d cut from another old shirt. I would need to buy new clothes soon at my current rate of ruin. On the other hand, I would easily be able to replace my entire wardrobe as soon as Big Jack’s check cleared.

The silk lining I’d used to wrap my hand at Snake’s was starting to stick to the wound. Slowly, I peeled away the material clotted to my hand. The bleeding had stopped, but the flesh was badly swollen. I wasn’t sure if it looked worse than it felt. The Dilaudid dulled the pain down from sharp and stabbing to dull and throbbing. Once my hand was unwrapped, I wiggled the fingers again slowly. I didn’t bother checking my own medicine cabinet for disinfectant or bandages. My rusty can of shaving cream, half box of Q-Tips, and Tom & Jerry juice glass wouldn’t do me much good.

Was that a giggle coming from the living room? Go Junior.

To unscrew the bottle of vodka, I had to use my good hand and my teeth. I poured half the bottle over the wound, keeping the cap in my mouth to bite down on. The pain hit hard and fast. I clenched down hard enough to fire the cap out my mouth like a.22 slug, sending it bouncing around the bathtub. Without the cap, my teeth decided to sink into my tongue instead. I cried out in confused pain, not sure which injury to scream about. Taking a few deep breaths, I tied the strips of material together and rewrapped my hand tightly like a boxer’s.

As a final precaution, I rolled a mouthful of vodka over my freshly wounded tongue and spit a gob of pink saliva into the sink. I poured myself a cup of (substandard) coffee and went to see what was so funny.

When I walked into the living room, I saw Cassie sitting on my couch and Junior facing her, squatting on a footstool. I froze in the doorway.

Cassie was playing with the stun gun.

Junior was explaining to her how it worked. “When you press that little button right here, BZZZZT!” Junior shook and convulsed to emphasize the results. Cassie giggled at his pantomime.

I said a silent prayer that Junior had the sense to remove the batteries. No way would he be so stupid.

Junior saw me standing there. “Hey, Boo. What was all the hollering about? You yank your plank too hard?”

I never got to answer him.

I learned two things in that moment.

1. Prayers are worthless against Biblical stupidityAnd

2. Junior is beyond that stupid.

Cassie found her window when Junior turned to me in order to bust my balls. She stuck Rosie against Junior’s neck and pressed the button-just like the shithead had instructed her to. Junior made a noise like, “Ba-GAAACK,” jerked once, and flew backward, tumbling feet over ass over head. His feet stuck straight up in the air for a second before they plopped heavily down to the floor.

“How do you like it, fucker?” Cassie yelled. She was on her feet in a flash, holding the stun gun over Junior in two unsteady hands.

I got to take one step before she turned Rosie’s business end toward me.

“You stay right there,” she said. She jabbed the air with the stun gun, arms shaking. “Give me your phone!”

“Don’t have one. It got shut off,” I lied.

“Then why do you still carry it?” She pointed the stun gun toward my hip.

Shit. The cell phone. Forgot I owned the stupid thing, much less that I wore it.

Plan B. Nice Guy. I put on my best soft rock DJ voice. “Cassie, put it down. Talk to me. We just want to help you.”

“I’ll help myself, thank you very much.” Her arms shook with the effort of holding up the stun gun. “Now give me the phone!” The kid was running on her last reserves of adrenaline, which also seemed to be all that was holding her up.

“No.”

“Give it to me!” She took a step forward and pressed the button again to show me she meant business. The electrodes crackled blue arcs.

I slowly bent over and put my coffee on the floor. If push came to shove, I wanted both hands available to me. Her having lost the element of surprise, I was reasonably sure I could disarm her before she got me. What I wasn’t so sure of was that I could do it without hurting her. “Who are you going to call?”

“I have people. I have friends.”

“Who?”

“I have people I can call.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself.

“Who?” I said a little more harshly. “The piece of shit you’ve been staying with?”

“Don’t call him that. He loves me.”

“Guy’s got one twisted-ass idea of love. You look at your eye lately?”

She brushed her fingers lightly over her shiner. “I… I have other people,” she said, all teenage indignance.

“Who? Your dad?” I pulled the cell phone out and opened it. “Shit, I’ll call him myself. Remember? He’s the one who hired us to find you. The sooner he picks your little bitch-ass up, the better.” I held the phone out to her.

She froze, stunned by the rough card I’d just played. Her mouth opened and closed a couple times.

I tuned the aggression up a notch, pushing her back on the defensive. “What do you think we’re doing? Babysitting? Kidnapping?”

“I… but…” Was that a flicker of doubt that played across her eyes? The stun gun went down a notch. If I rushed her now, I’d get zapped right in the testicles instead of the chest.

“We were trying to find you. We thought that you were dead, that the fucker killed you.”

Oops.

I regretted saying the words the second they left my mouth.

With that, the flicker of doubt was gone, replaced with fury again. “You’re the animal. You didn’t have to beat him up so bad!” Then the pieces came together in her head. She realized why we thought she was dead. She shook her head. “No. Nonononono…”

Fuck it. I’d already crossed the line. It was time to plant my feet. “Yeah. We saw what he did to you. The guy who says he loves you. He fucking smacked the shit out of you and raped you.”

“No! That’s not how it happened!” Spittle flew from her lips as she started bawling. She was breaking down, caught between hysteria and denial.

“What happened, then? Was it a practical joke? What am I missing here, Cassie? Tell me!”

“He… he said it had to look real. That I had to be really scared. That’s why he had to do it that way. So they’d believe it.” She was having trouble speaking through the deep jags.

“‘They’ who?”

“The people who buy those DVDs from him. They pay a lot of money for them. Derek said he could sell just a few of them and make enough money to run away. Just us. So we could be together.”

Jesus. One of the oldest lines in the oldest book. “That was a lie, Cassandra. Derek is running a sick freak show, and you were his star attraction.” I made a quick mental note. Derek. Derek Bevilaqua. Now I had a full name along with an address to hand to Underdog.

I’d driven the knife into her heart. All I had to was twist it and she’d be broken.

I suck. I know. Fuck you.

“He never loved you. He used you.” I let the words hang.

She dropped Rosie and crumpled, wailing. I caught her on the way down and held her as she wept and beat her hands against my chest. I held her tight until she stopped struggling against it. I felt her go slack, all the fight in her evaporated. I put her down gently on the couch and sat to her side. She buried her face in my chest, crying it all out. I didn’t know what to do with her. Or my arms, for that matter. For lack of a better place to put them, I held them up over my head. I wasn’t comfortable in either my seating position or my role as comforter.

“Um… do you mind?” I fumbled for the right words. “Are you gonna bite me again if I put my arms down?”

“No,” she said softly into my armpit.

“Promise, Mad Dog?”

Surprisingly, she choked on a laugh. “I promise.”

I let my arms down around Cassie’s shoulders. We sat there until her sobs trailed off and her breathing evened into an exhausted sleep. My own eyelids grew heavy, and I let the fatigue wash over me. The last thing I heard as I drifted away was a great snore erupting from the floor where Junior lay sprawled.

It was the same snoring that woke me up. Everything hurt. I sat up slowly and stiffly, thinking of Nick Nolte in North Dallas Forty. My joints felt like somebody had dug them out with an ice cream scoop and replaced them with month-old taffy.

The sun was going down. Must have been more run-down than I realized. I’d managed to sleep a decent clip with Junior in the room. Most people have trouble sleeping while Junior’s in the same zip code. The guy snores like a Rottweiler choking on a bowling ball. I moved my tongue around my mouth and instantly regretted it. Besides tasting horrible, my tongue was still sore from the self-chomping it received.

As was my shoulder from colliding with the door at The Cellar.

And my jaw from where Sid popped me.

And my hand where Cassandra bit me.

Waitaminnit.

No Cassandra.

I jumped off the couch. “Junior!” I yelled.

“Whazza? Wha?” Junior leapt to his feet, fists cocked to ward off potential attackers. “Aaghhh! Mothercharleyfuckerhorse!” he screamed and dropped back onto the floor, clutching his calf.

I ran to the bathroom.

No Cassandra.

The bedroom.

No Cassandra.

“Shitfuckgoddamnsonofabitch,” I ranted as I tore through my apartment. How could I have been so goddamn stupid? I burst through the kitchen door hard enough to make Cassie jump even with her headphones on. She was rooting inside my fridge and munching on a piece of individually wrapped cheese product she’d found.

Cassie yipped in surprise. “Jeez, Boo. Try some decaf.”

I leaned on the stove, gasping and willing my pulse to slow down to “rumba.”

Cassie popped another piece of yellow food product into her mouth. “What do you guys have to eat around here?”

“For starters, not the cheese,” I said. After all we’d been through, I hoped a piece of ancient cheese product wasn’t going to drop Cassie into toxic shock in my kitchen. “How’s about we order a pizza or something?”

Junior came hopping into the kitchen. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Junior passed on dinner, opting instead to head back to his place to shower and change into clothes a little more dignified. He complained that my shirt was cutting off circulation. Since Cassandra was a vegetarian, we ordered half-pepperoni, half-plain. The pizza arrived and we sat down at my kitchen table and ate in a strange and heavy silence. Cassandra didn’t look at me, just stared at a space hovering in the air over the pizza. After half a slice, her eyes started to fill with tears.

“I was so scared,” she said.

“Hmmm?” I mumbled, mouth full of hot mozzarella.

“On the video. Derek rigged the knife with a blood pack. He squeezed it, and the blood squirted out.” Drops fell from her eyes onto my lucky plate. “Some got into my mouth when I screamed. It tasted like blood. I thought it was my blood.”

“It sure as shit looked real.”

“I was so scared. I didn’t know. I thought it was real.”

“We did, too. That’s why we freaked out and went to town on Derek.” I filled my mouth with pizza so I wouldn’t have to talk anymore.

“He lied to me, didn’t he?” She was speaking through sniffles. “He didn’t… he couldn’t have loved me.”

Jesus. I opened my full mouth but said nothing. I didn’t know what I could say.

“Did my dad see the… did he?” She didn’t have to finish.

“No.”

She nodded and stared back into the empty place.

I pulled a piece of pepperoni from my slice and chewed. “Far as I’m concerned, he’s never going to.”

Her lower lip trembled and tears dropped onto her plate. “What if…”

“What if what?”

“What if he finds out?”

“Well, now that me and Junior are done with the job of finding you, we’re available for any new gig that might come up.”

Her face scrunched up. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“You could hire us to get back any DVDs that Derek might have already sold.”

“But… I don’t…”

“How much money you got?”

Cassie opened her little purse and pulled out one crumpled ten, three fives, and more crumpled singles. I grabbed the singles and stuffed them in my pocket.

“Done and done,” I said and tore off a piece of crust. “You need a receipt for your taxes?”

She sniffled and shook her head. She was smiling, but it looked like she might bawl. She looked up at me with the same eyes that had troubled me a little more than a week ago. There was so much hurt still there. That unsettling maturity remained, but I could see a spark of the kid had survived.

I smiled at her. “Theater camp is your own goddamn problem, though.”

Cassie laughed through a mouthful of pizza, almost spitting it onto the table. “God, I hated that crap.”

“No shit. Eat your pizza.”

It would be over for the kid soon enough. It wasn’t over for me and Derek yet. Not by a long shot. He needed to hurt some more. I needed to hurt him some more. I swore to myself, when all was said and done with Cassie, he and I were gonna dance one more time. And I was being paid four dollars for the privilege.

The phone picked up on the third ring. “Kelly Reese.”

I pinched my nose and spoke in a high register. “Hi, my name is Fitz Benwalla. I’m calling from the Boston Phoenix. We’re doing a piece on Boston’s sexiest tough guys.”

“Excuse me?”

“Rumor has it you’ve got one of the most eligible, sexiest, smartest, and hunka-hunka burnin’ love bachelors in town knocking at your door at all hours. Also that he’s super manly. And did I say sexy?”

“Don’t believe all the rumors you hear, Boo.”

“Okay. That hurt.”

She laughed, and I felt a goofy smile play across my face. “Get over it, tough guy.”

“Too bad. I was going to ask you out for a very expensive dinner just as soon as the check from your boss cleared.”

Silence.

“You still there?” I knew she was, but I was savoring her surprise.

“Ohmygod! You found her?”

“Got her.”

“Ohmygod!” she said, her voice rising an octave in excitement. I liked the sound of it. The receiver clunked painfully in my ear. I think she dropped the phone. After some quick scrabbling sounds, “Where was she? Is she okay?”

“She’s a little banged up emotionally, but otherwise seems okay.”

“What happened?”

“You know, guy stuff. She was staying with a guy. He wasn’t what she thought he was.” And that was the cleanest and most biblically understated way I could put that.

“Aw, poor kid.”

“Yeah. We boys sure can suck.”

“Maybe I should come over and talk to her? Maybe I could help her, girl to girl.”

“Not a bad idea, that. When can you come over?”

“I can get there by nine.”

Nine. That would leave me a little over an hour. “Sounds like a plan. Oh, and bring her a change of clothes, if you can.”

“No trouble at all. I’ll run by The Gap.”

“You need her size and stuff?”

“Nope. I’d say she’s about a one. I’ll get a two, just to be safe. See you at nine.”

“See you.”

I hung up and started frantically cleaning. I started in the kitchen. Lacking much in the way of cleaning fluids, I just used an old sponge I had in the sink and elbow grease.

When I made it to the living room, Cassandra was watching a talk show. She looked over and watched my half-assed speed cleaning. Finally, her curiosity got the best of her. “What’s going on?”

“You know Kelly? Works for your dad?”

“Yeah, she’s nice.”

“She’s gonna swing by, hang with us. Maybe you two can talk. You know, girl talk.”

Cassie made a face.

“What?”

“Why can’t I talk to another girl without some guy calling it girl talk?” She folded her arms in feminist self-righteousness.

Jesus H…

“I don’t know. It’s just a term. Me and Junior? When we talk, it’s guy talk. I was just projecting. Would you mind helping me clean up a bit?”

“Why? Trying to impress your girlfriend?”

My ears went hot. “She’s not my girlfriend,” I said in a tone more appropriate for denying a cootie infestation.

“Then why are you blushing?”

“I’m not.”

“Whatever. It smells funny in here anyway.”

“What? Hey!”

The apartment would never get a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, but it was as clean as it was going to get by 8:30. I hopped in the shower and gave myself a good scrubbing.

At five minutes past, Kelly was at the door. Since Kelly hadn’t had dinner, Cassie had a teenager’s bottomless appetite, and I’m a fat fuck in training, we ordered Chinese. The three of us were watching The Simpsons in an awkward quiet when the food arrived. I carried the greasy bags into the living room and heard Kelly opening the kitchen cabinets.

“Do you have plates?” she yelled toward the door.

“I have plate.”

She walked back into the living room. “Why don’t you have plates?”

“Never needed more than one. How many am I supposed to have?”

“Three would be nice.”

I went into the bag and pulled out four Styrofoam plates. “Now we have an extra.”

She gave Cassandra an exasperated look and stormed back into the kitchen, muttering. I caught the words “bachelor,” “unbelievable,” and, I think, “zoo.” But that could have been “Boo.” Then, louder, “Where are your forks?”

“I have fork.”

After we ate, I broke out my beat-up poker set. Kelly had obviously played before, and was good enough to make me nervous. This girl was full of surprises. Cassie had a harder time picking up the game. After dropping another hand, she threw her cards on the table.

“Poker? Really?”

“Consider it a life skill I’m teaching you.”

Kelly didn’t say anything, just gave me a look over her cards.

“I don’t suppose you have Grand Theft Auto hidden away anywhere.”

“Nope. All I got are these old analog games.” I dropped the flop cards.

“He’s old school,” Kelly said, a barb of sarcasm tipping the words.

Cassie snorted. “You got the old part right.”

Kelly snickered behind her cards. I glared.

Cassie snorted another laugh. Then the snort turned into a sniff-which then turned into a stuttering intake of breath.

Uh-oh.

Before I found a new way to look uncomfortable, Kelly whisked Cassie away into the bathroom and closed the door. Why is it always the bathroom with women? Mysteries upon mysteries.

Left to my own devices, I walked out onto the porch to smoke. Hippie Phil was there, as always. I gave him a cigarette, and he nodded thanks. We both sat, puffing away in silence. He spoke first. “Woman trouble?”

I blew out a long breath and chuckled. “Brother, if you only knew.”

Three cigarettes later, I went back inside and paced. What was going on in there? I sat at the table, picking at some teriyaki beef, when I heard the bathroom door open and shut again. My watch said it was just past midnight. They’d been in the bathroom for an hour and a half. Good thing I didn’t have to piss.

Kelly came into the kitchen and sat opposite me. She talked in a hushed tone. “She’s a sweet kid.”

“Yeah.”

“And she’s hurt and confused to beat the band.”

I already knew that, but I figured Kelly already knew that I knew. “So, what’s going on?”

“It’s a girl thing. She just needed another girl to talk to about it.”

“So… we gonna have a little pajama party tonight?” I asked with my best devilish grin.

“You wish,” she said.

My devilish grin deflated into an idiot frown. “Oh. Okay.”

“I’ll stay a bit longer, but I should be heading home sooner than later.”

“Can’t you stay here? With her? We have all the modern amenities. Phone. Hot and cold running water. Uh, me?” Until Kelly said she was going to leave, I hadn’t realized how terrified I was of being left alone with an emotional teenage girl.

Kelly curled her lip in an evil smirk that made my devilish grin look saintly. Lord, she was cute. “A tempting offer and one that I may take you up on later this week, but it might confuse the issue at hand.”

“Meaning?”

“I think that Miss Cassandra has a tiny bit of a crush on you.”

I felt the blood gush up from my chest and into my head. “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes.” She clearly and smugly enjoyed my discomfort.

“You… you can’t leave me with her, then. I mean, you can’t leave her… aw, shit.”

“Life is so tough for you hunka-hunkas, isn’t it?” she said, pinching my cheek. Not only was she enjoying my embarrassment, but she did Elvis better than I did, too.

“Nobody likes a smartass, Reese.”

She laughed evilly as she strolled out of the kitchen.

My only recourse was to stare at her ass once again with all my might. That would show her.

Ten minutes later, Kelly was yawning and ready to go home just as Junior pulled up in front. I was relieved. Any bouncer will tell you, backup is always appreciated.

I walked Kelly out to her car. “So give me a call tomorrow and we’ll make the arrangements.” I leaned in to give her a kiss goodbye, but she pulled back.

“Un-unh. Cassie might be watching,” she said, pressing a hug tightly against me, enjoying the tease. She winked and blew a kiss at me as she drove away.

I needed a cold, cold shower.

Instead, I went back in and sat at the table. Junior had taken Kelly’s spot in the poker game. He was rearranging his cards and grumbling about the miserable hand she’d left him. “Jeez, I can’t even see what the hell she was aiming for here. Can we start over?”

“The hand’s already started. Play what you’re dealt,” I said.

He grumbled some more, but played on. Cassandra won the hand, but kept quiet. Something was making her uncomfortable. As Junior shuffled the worn cards, she said softly, “I’m sorry I zapped you.”

Junior shrugged, but didn’t look up from the cards. “S’okay. Besides, I got you first. It was only right that you got me, too.” He started dealing the cards. “And I haven’t slept that good in a long time.”

Cassie smiled and took her cards off the table.

“Does this mean I get to bite you on the hand now?” I asked.

She delicately offered her hand and batted her eyes at me.

Dammit.

I grabbed her wrist and blew a wet raspberry on her knuckles.

“Ewwww!” she squealed as she wiped the spit on my shirtsleeve.

“There. We’re even.”

After a few more hands, Cassandra looked like she was having trouble focusing on the cards.

“You want to hit the hay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said drowsily.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Me and Junior are gonna play some more cards.”

“Mmm. Okay.” She yawned wide enough to swallow a football and shuffled into the living room.

“Nice kid,” Junior said, as he flipped the cards out of the deck. “But it’s over.”

I didn’t reply.

“You hearing me, Boo?” He stared into his cards as he said it, but the words were weighted with lead. “We hand her over to Pops, hand the address to Dog, and cash our check.”

“I wasn’t…” I couldn’t think of a good way to end the sentence, so I just said it again. “I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were.”

You can’t argue with someone who knows you as deeply as Junior knows me, so I didn’t bother.

I reached into my pocket and handed him two of the crumpled singles.

“What the fuck is this?”

“Your half of the fee for job number two. Enjoy the riches.”

His lips pressed together white. “You lousy fuck.”

I lay my cards on the table. “Triple eights. What you got?”

“I hate you.”

Junior and I agreed to split shifts on the recliner next to the couch Cassie was sleeping on, still not completely of the belief that Cassie wouldn’t make a bolt in the middle of the night. Junior got my bed first. As I quietly stepped into the living room, I looked at Cassandra asleep on the couch. The Boy was on his knees next to her head, running his fingers gently through her hair. The black strands over her forehead didn’t stir as his hands softly smoothed them over. With a sad expression, The Boy looked up at me standing in the dim yellow hallway light. His small mouth bowed downward and he shook his head.

“I know,” I whispered as I pulled the throw blanket over her thin arms. “I know.”

As quietly as I could, I slid the chair into the recline position and tried to read an old Needle magazine by the streetlight. Less than half a story in, I’d given myself a massive eyestrain headache. I closed my eyes tight, trying to will the headache away. Instead, I fell right asleep.

It certainly came as no surprise to me that I had a dirty, dirty dream about Kelly. My dream finally nude-ified the body I’d been thinking consistently about for the last week. And for once, my overtaxed and overdisturbed brain didn’t disappoint by giving her va-jay-jay fangs or replacing my dick with a dachshund. All was as it was supposed to be and where it was supposed to be.

I had surrendered myself entirely to the dream when just enough reality crept in through the sleep that I realized too goddamn slowly that something was, in fact, manipulating my dick.

I bolted awake, my hands touching skin. Reactively, I pushed it off. Cassie hit the floor with a thump, falling in enough light from the street for me to see she was naked.

I covered myself, my pants unbuttoned, underwear open. “What the fuck?”

Cassie scrambled off the floor and pulled the throw blanket over herself. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Jesus, kid. What the fuck?”

She pulled herself into the corner of the couch, huddling against herself under the blanket. “I’m sorry. I thought-”

“Thought what? What the fuck could you have been thinking?” I couldn’t suppress the anger in my voice. Some of it reflected my roiling shame at enjoying whatever was happening down there before reality threw a bucket of ice water on my libido.

“I thought… I thought you liked me.” She didn’t cry. She just said the words softly, coldly. I was expecting tears. Tears would have been expected. Tears wouldn’t have been as disturbing as the cold.

“Listen, kid-”

“Stop calling me that,” she hissed.

I heard my bedroom door slam open. “Yo, Boo! We okay?”

“All under control, Junior. I- I just rolled off the chair.”

“Dumbass. You want to switch off?”

I looked at Cassie. The kid we’d played poker with, who giggled when I blew a raspberry on her hand, was gone. Fury at my rejection burned through her eyes. She smirked. “Why don’t we do that, Boo? Why don’t you let your friend have a turn?” She let the blanket slip from one shoulder, falling below her breast.

No way in hell was I going to subject Junior to this. “All good, buddy.”

Cassie curled a lip and picked up my pack of smokes, popped one into her mouth. I shouldn’t have been surprised that she smoked, too. “Change your mind?” she whispered, leaning back, letting the blanket slide lower.

I picked her clothes up off the floor, tossed them roughly into her face. “No, I haven’t… kid. Put your clothes on and stop embarrassing yourself.”

“Fuck you,” she said. But she pulled the shirt over her head. “What’s your use for me?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You said Derek used me. You think my father doesn’t use me? You think he has any other purpose for me in his life than to be his pretty little photo-op? Everybody uses me. What’s your use? I don’t think I’m going to serve your political career; you don’t want to use my pussy-”

“Stop it.”

“What is it, Boo? How are you using me?”

I didn’t reply, just snatched my smokes away from her and lit my own. She sat in the corner of the couch and glared at me. I sat on the recliner and glared back. I won out. Her eyelids sagged and her head drooped before she even finished the cigarette. I plucked the cigarette from her hands as she nodded off, and ground it out in the ashtray.

“Sorry. Mm… sorry,” she murmured as she leaned over into sleep. One tear ran from her eye, tracked over her nose. I pulled the blanket over her again.

I didn’t sleep any more that night.

“Wow, Boo. Rough night?” Kelly showed up early with a bag of bagels and spreads.

“Just long,” I mumbled. I’d taken a quick shower before Kelly showed and still had bags under my eyes that looked like five pounds of shit stuffed into a two-pound sack. Adding to my confusion was the return of Cassandra the fourteen-year-old. When Junior finally woke, she gave him a spritely kiss on the cheek, then giggled the morning away while he showed her how to make a proper cup of coffee. She didn’t look at or talk to me all that much.

We ate quietly while waiting for Donnelly to arrive. And, as Cassie happily munched on her sesame bagel, I tried to find the crack in this personality. One of them-the happy kid or the head-case young woman-had to be a façade. But for the life of me, they both felt like the same kid. The right kid. Even the wrong Cassie felt like the right kid.

When the black sedan pulled up in front of the house, I was tired. It was hot, I was feeling beat into dust, and I was ready to get this experience wrapped up.

The car sat there for a minute, engine running. The three of us watched from the window. What now? Was I supposed to walk her out and just drop her in the back seat?

Fuck you, I thought. Come in and get her.

Barnes finally got out of the driver’s side and opened the back door. I felt bad for my standoffish behavior when I got a good look at Donnelly. It had only been days since I’d last seen him at his condo, but it could have been years. The man looked as tired as I did, worse even. The strain of Cassandra’s absence had taken a far greater toll on him than he’d let on.

“Daddy,” Cassandra said softly, crying. With a bolt, she was out the door, running to him. His expression when he saw her made my throat lump up. I walked to the doorway and watched the most feared lawman in Boston standing with his daughter in his arms, showering the top of her head with kisses.

Barnes walked over, face set like marble. His eyes were unreadable under his mirrored sunglasses. He held out a thin envelope-too thin to contain both the money and the information that was hinted at. Completely without expression, he said, “Nice job.”

I put my fingers around the envelope, but he held on to it for a second longer.

“For a piece of shit bouncer.” Barnes took back the envelope and tossed it into my chest. It fluttered to my feet.

I set my jaw.

My eyes never left his face.

Junior picked up the envelope, said, “Does this mean we’re not spending Thanksgiving together?” He handed me the envelope, I’m sure in order to have his hands free.

Barnes glared. Then he went back to the car.

Cassie was looking out the window, eyes on the envelope in my hands. Then she looked at me, her eyes radiating hurt and understanding.

She finally knew what my use for her was. I wanted to say something. To tell her she was seeing it all wrong. I didn’t say anything, even goodbye.

Was she wrong?

The ride pulled away, taking them back into their own world.

Never even got a goodbye.

“Money!” Junior yelled, shocking me from my guilt.

“I’m going to use the little girl’s room and let you boys have your moment,” Kelly said with a smirk.

“What kind of moment do you think we’re going to have?”

“With that much enthusiasm, I’m not sure,” she said, walking into the apartment.

“Lemme see it,” Junior said, half-running to the steps.

“Here.” I handed him the envelope.

He held the envelope tenderly, as though he couldn’t decide whether to tear it open or start tongue-kissing the flap. “I can’t open it,” he said.

“Give it to me, then.”

“No! No. No, I’ll do it.” He ran the envelope under his nose, breathing it in. “Mmm. Nothing like the smell of Cheddar in the morning. Smells like… victory.” Carefully, he ran a finger under the fold and pulled it open. With the same care, he pulled two pieces of paper from the envelope. He chucked the one that wasn’t a cashier’s check to the ground.

“Dude,” he said with more than a little awe.

“What?”

“Dude.”

“Dude?”

“This is one big check, my friend.” He turned the check around. On the paper was the amount of $30,000. Five grand more than agreed upon. More money than we’d ever seen, much less had, in our entire lives.

I picked up the note that Junior had tossed. All it said was:

I hope the extra $5000 covers any expenses.

I am in your debt.

Thank you. You should receive the information

we discussed from my people within two weeks.

Unsigned, of course.

Two weeks. Two more weeks for information I’d waited twenty years for. What was two weeks, right? It felt like a fucking lifetime. Again.

“How soon can we cash this?” Junior asked.

I crumpled up the paper and tried to hide my… hell, I didn’t know what I was feeling, or why I was trying to hide it. Was it disappointment? “I’ll bring it to the bank tomorrow.” Junior didn’t have a bank account. Never trusted them. Far as I knew, he kept his money stuffed in a mattress.

“Because, frankly? I want to spread it on the floor, roll around in it nekkid, then rub one out while staring in Ben Franklin’s eyes.”

“Don’t ever ask me to break a hundie for you ever again.”

“Brother, from now on twenties are for lighting cigarettes.” Junior’s eyes flicked to my doorway. “Can’t help but notice you got one visitor left.”

“And?”

“And I’m going home and going back to bed.” Junior clasped my shoulder, looking at me like I imagine a proud father would. “You fuck her, Boo.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Thanks, Junior. But I think she’s gotta decide to-”

“Fuck her blue, my friend.” He clapped my shoulder and walked backward to Miss Kitty, giving me the double-forefinger gunslinger.

“Dick.”

“Fuck her blue,” he said one more time in an Irish whisper and climbed back into the car.

When I walked back inside, Kelly was looking at me the way she had at Donnelly the night in the loft. There was admiration there, but there was something breathless on top of it now.

She stood and kissed me hard, pulling me down by the front of my shirt. Our tongues met as she put her hands under my shirt and brushed her fingers along my stomach.

I fumbled with the buttons on her blouse for a moment and couldn’t take it anymore. I tore the shirt open, buttons popping off and clattering to the floor.

What the hell, I could buy her a new one.

She pulled back, dug her fingers along the neck of my T-shirt, and ripped it down across my chest, laughing.

I stopped.

She stopped.

Stunned, she looked at the vicious patchwork of scar tissue that made up my torso. The long incision scar that started six inches under my Adam’s apple and ran to a point just above my navel. The burns. The smear of ruined flesh that took up a large part of the upper left side of my chest.

Hot shame flooded my cheeks at her touch. She looked me in the eyes, cupped my chin, and kissed me deeper while pushing me toward the bedroom.

Clumsily, I pulled off my jeans and underwear in one quick hopping motion that almost sent me toppling. Laughing, Kelly rolled back on the bed and gracefully slipped out of her skirt and panties. God bless her.

I kneeled at the edge of the bed, and she sat up to draw me on top of her. Our eyes locked. Her lip curled up in that sly smile. “My tough guy,” she said. Lying back, she took me in her hand and gently glided me inside. She let out a small purring sound as I started rocking myself into her.

She turned me over and straddled me, forcing me deeper and deeper. I luxuriated in the smell of her, the skin beneath my hands, the tickle of her hair on my nose as I kissed underneath her ear.

It was a close one, but I managed to hang in there and Kelly groaned just before I did. Ain’t I a champ?

She wasn’t blue by the end, but I still felt pretty damned good about myself.

We lay on top of the sheets. I rested on my back and Kelly had her arms and legs wrapped around me from the side. I couldn’t help staring at her naked bone-white skin. Softly, I ran my fingers back and forth over her curves, like lying with a soft marble statue. I realized she didn’t have any tattoos on her. She was the first woman I’d ever been with, that I’d seen naked, who had none. The uniform purity of her skin fascinated me.

I inhaled our mingling scents. The day was turning hot and humid again, but there wasn’t any discomfort as we lay together, sticky sweat dripping off us. I wouldn’t have traded that position for the whole world and half the moon.

She lay her head on my left shoulder, her breath tickling the sparse chest hair that determinedly poked through the thick scar tissue. Her fingers traced the outline of the pink disfigurements.

She didn’t ask.

They all asked.

I didn’t want to tell any of them before. I didn’t feel like telling her yet, either. We both just lay there silently until we dropped into sleep, her hand resting on the scar tissue over my heart.

I awoke with a sharp intake of breath. Kelly was towel-drying her hair in the long mirror suspended on the inside of my bedroom door. I rolled to my side and admired her nudity as she dried herself. She caught my staring in the mirror and smiled. “What?”

“What, what?”

“You’re wearing a face.”

“I have a face most days. This is mah thinking face.”

“Thinking about what?”

“If I told you, you’d have to shower all over again.” I wiggled my eyebrows at her.

We showered together the second time.

She was scrubbing my back when she said, “I was thinking about getting a tattoo.”

I couldn’t explain to her why I laughed so hard.

After the shower, she gathered up her things in a rush. She poked and lifted objects around my room, looking for a missing something or other.

“What’s your rush there, Reese?”

“I do have to show up at the campaign office at some point today. Have you seen my shoe?”

I halfheartedly looked around. “Nope.” I flopped back onto my bed, the beaded water cooling my skin in the slowly moving air.

Kelly found one shoe under a pillow. “Jeez, now I have to run home and finish my hair.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

She shot me a look.

“What?” I asked. “Isn’t the wet look back?”

“Yeah. And if it dries in this humidity, it’ll look like a Brillo pad.”

“You girls and your doings, I swear…”

“Well, maybe if my shirt still had some buttons on it…”

“Don’t blame me. Blame your sultry ways. I couldn’t control myself.”

She chucked the pillow at me as she hopped on one foot, putting her shoe on. “Get up, put on a pair of underwear, and walk me out like a gentleman.”

“Wasn’t it my roguish devil-may-care demeanor that attracted you to me in the first place?” I said, pulling on a pair of reasonably clean shorts. She just kept muttering to herself as she hustled her way out.

In the doorway, she tried to give me a quick and cursory goodbye kiss, but I held tight and planted a kiss I wanted her to feel in her toes.

She pulled back forcefully. “No! Oh, no you don’t. I have to get to work. I’ll call you tonight. You can buy me a fabulous dinner with your newfound wealth.” One more quick peck and she was off. I watched her car pull around the corner.

With two spectacular sexual exercises lumped on top of my brutal lack of sleep, I felt like I could nap until the Bruins won another Stanley Cup.

I dropped back down on my bed, her smell still in my sheets. I drew in a deep breath of it and smiled. Rolling over, my hand felt something silky under a fold in the comforter. “Well, I’ll be damned,” I muttered. In her haste and confusion, Ms. Reese had left behind her frilly little blue panties. She said she had to go home to finish her hair. Should I call her and let her know she was air-surfing under her skirt? Could make for an interesting day at the office for her.

I must have drifted off for a little while, because my doorbell chimed, waking me from a wonderful dream about a world without panties.

Dammit.

I opened the door with a smile, expecting to barter for the return of her drawers.

Instead, I got a gun barrel in my face.

I froze in confusion.

The gun slowly lowered from my nose, and I got a brief look at the face at the other end of the arm. Dirty blond hair cut in a flattop. Pale skin and one blue eye. The other was a milky cataract, a bright scar from the corner of the socket worming over the ear like a pink garter snake. He stood a couple inches over me and wore an expensive-looking suit on his wiry frame.

The stranger in my doorway with the gun pointed at me beamed like we were long-lost friends. He was still smiling when he pulled the trigger.

Bang.