"Um, okay." He waited. "Thank you, honey."
He nodded and turned away. I sat on the toilet in a daze until he reappeared at the doorway with a huge tumbler of water and a fistful of Advil.
"You should be lying down," he admonished me. "Since your head hurts and all."
"How do you know my head hurts?" I managed to squeak.
"Don"t you know I know everything about you, Emilia?" He set the gla.s.s and medicine down, then crouched down in front of me, hitching up his work pants beforehand so they wouldn"t crease.
"I can tell what you"re thinking. I know you better than you know yourself." He took my wrists in his hands, circling them with his fingers. "That"s why we work together so well. We know each other. We know what to expect from each other. And we know what would happen if we were ever separated."
"What would happen?" I whispered.
He stood up and kissed me on the forehead. "I don"t even want to think about it," he said airily.
He took my hand and led me back to bed. I crawled in dutifully and closed my eyes, but he didn"t leave. I slowed my breathing, forcing myself to relax, but he still stood over me. Trying harder, I willed myself into an even rhythm, but I was sure the thudding of my heart in my throat gave me away.
I was deeply, deeply afraid.
Chapter 13.
J.
It really was the perfect place for a biker clubhouse.
Steel Cycles stood alone in the wasteland under the overpa.s.ses. The Frankford El and 1-95 converged overheard in a crashing clatter that drowned out any noises the bikes made. Their only neighbors had packed up years ago, leaving Steel Cycles as the lone sentinel standing amid the sea of abandoned, trash-strewn lots. The Philadelphia police ignored the area, content to let the bikers rule their little noisy corner of the world. So long as the Sons of Steel stayed here, they were pretty much left alone.
J. flopped onto his back and stared at the clubhouse ceiling. Their bunkhouse was a small section of the garage strewn with more cots than members. Teach ran a tight ship as President, and over the years the number of Sons had dwindled down to just the core six. J., MacDougal and Case lived at the clubhouse full time. Crash split his time between the bunkhouse and his filthy bachelor pad up near Temple. Doctor D. lived alone in a studio in Port Richmond, unwilling to venture out much since losing his old lady to breast cancer. And Teach and his old lady, Mallory, had a building in Kensington they were renting out to bohemian art students. They were making a killing.
And as far as J. was concerned, that was enough. The more people you let into your life, the more chances there were that they"d f.u.c.k you over.
He knew he should get some sleep. He had to do the delivery tomorrow and wanted to be up early to take the chopper out on a run before he let it go. The longer the ride the longer he could give himself to clear his thoughts.
Let the wind blow the memory of Emmy away.
His traitorous desire reawakened the minute he allowed himself to think her name. J. turned to his side, grateful that he was the only one in the bunkhouse. The rest of the club was still out celebrating his parole, and wouldn"t be back until the early morning. But after leaving Emmy in the hands of that racist guard, J. hadn"t felt like partying. He would have gone looking for a fight. Someone would have said something, or looked at him wrong, or breathed too near him and that would be the end of them. The red rage would have taken over, and someone would have had to pay.
Instead he pushed through the rage and come out the other side. If he wasn"t so angry, he could have been proud.
Instead he cursed himself again as a fool. He squeezed his eyes shut and counted backwards from ten. His breathing slowed as he concentrated on the rush of traffic above him. Prison had acclimated him to falling asleep amidst a din of noise. He listened to the whoosh of the El on the tracks above him and calculated that it was the last run up to Frankford before the line closed. He really needed to sleep.
But the memory of Emmy"s b.r.e.a.s.t.s pressed into his back would not be denied. Sighing heavily, J. slid a hand into his boxers. Quick before his brothers came home and caught him. He would allow himself this one last memory of pleasure before shoving Emmy forever from his mind.
Then he could finally sleep.
J."s eyes shot open to the sound of the rolling garage door being lifted. The east facing door let a blast of hot summer sunshine into the clubhouse and directly into his tender eyeb.a.l.l.s.
"Are you s.h.i.tting me?" he groaned, clapping his arm over his eyes.
"Sorry man, it"s f.u.c.king hot as b.a.l.l.s in here already," Case grumbled, voice thick and heavy with sleep. "When we gonna get that air conditioner?"
"Maybe when you do some actual work that brings money in?" J. retorted, rolling to face the wall. His dreams had been scattered and disturbed, and his mouth felt like he had chewed on an old sock. Now was not the time to listen to his best friend b.i.t.c.hing about the heat.
"Told you, I"m working on something big," Case sighed and flopped back onto his cot. His huge, Nordic frame made the springs creak alarmingly. "So shut the f.u.c.k up."
With the garage open, there was no hope of sleeping further. The noise from the road was picking up with the Friday morning traffic. Soon enough the roads would be clogged with cars on the way to the AC Expressway and the Jersey Sh.o.r.e. J. loved summers in the city. Because everyone f.u.c.king left.
His client would want to do the same. He could imagine the portly doctor sitting proudly atop his expensive, customized chopper, believing he was a bada.s.s as he and his fat wife tooled to their sh.o.r.e house. That was probably why he insisted on delivery before Memorial Day.
J. swung his long legs onto the concrete floor and tested his body. He wasn"t hungover, not too bad anyway, and his hands were steady. Good enough to stand is good enough to ride.
He pulled a clean pair of jeans out of his cubby and pulled a tight black T-shirt over his chest, covering the patchwork of tattoos that made up his torso. J. loved some of his tats and regretted many, but all of them were a narrative of his life up to now.
It paid to remember where he came from. He pulled on his cut.
"Teach, you up?"
The old man poked his head back through the shop door, dreads swinging free. He hadn"t even bothered to wrap them this morning, so he must be hurting from last night celebration. J. grinned. "Should have known. Don"t you ever sleep?"
Teach"s face twitched as he suppressed a smile. "You do enough sleeping for both of us."
"Yeah and I"m up now, see?" J. shot back. "Got that delivery today. I wanted to take it for a test run first, then I was gonna ride it right to the guy"s place. Where"s he live?"
The old man bent his head and J. was surprised to see sorrow furrow his brow. "J. I"m sorry to be the bearer of bad news again. But your sister called last night. Twice actually. She left messages both times begging you to call back. To come home." Teach sighed heavily. "That girl"s got a mouth on her," he observed.
"Yeah, no s.h.i.t," J. grumbled, willing his heart to stop hammering in his chest. "Did she say why I gotta go back? Or did she just cuss out the phone?"
"Something about your mama, J."
J."s blood went cold. "She sick?" It shouldn"t be a surprise. Meryl Johnson had every chronic condition that came with a life of bad food and worse habits. And though he hadn"t seen his mother in close to four years, he could still picture her wide body planted on the faded plaid couch, directing him and his sister to fetch, carry and serve.
He had often wondered if Meryl had children specifically for the free labor. Sons take care of their mamas. It was the mantra she had drilled into him over and over when he was small, and he had believed it for a long while. As the man of the house, it was up to him to care for her, to bring her the pills that eased the pain in her joints, to light the cigarettes that dangled perpetually from her mouth, to fetch the beer from the friendly corner store whenever she ran out. Which was often.
When he had gone to prison, his biggest fear had been that no one would care for her. As much as he hated her for being a terrible mother, he was still her son and he still felt that duty.
"She"s sick, isn"t she," he repeated. It wasn"t a question.
"If I had to guess, I"d say yes," Teach said carefully.
"f.u.c.k."
"Do you know what you"re going to do?"
J. plunged his hands into his pockets to keep his fists from balling in rage. "I"ll deal with it," he said, but even he could hear how unconvincing his tone was.
But Teach merely nodded, taking him at his word. A man"s word was all he had. "I ever tell you about the time my daddy cut out on us?"
The blood was rushing in his ears, making it hard for him to hear his mentor. "What was that?"
"My daddy, you know how he lost his job way back when."
J. nodded at the familiar story. It was why the Sons of Steel were so named. Teach grew up up in Bethlehem, where his father had a good job with the Steelworks. When the plant started closing, he was one of the first to be laid off, most likely because of the color of his skin.
It had broken him and pulled the family down into a spiral of poverty that they were never quite able to break free of. When Teach was eighteen, he formed the first chapter of the Sons from the remnants of that workforce, pledging brotherhood and solidarity and help to the families who needed it. And that included finding money for the families of fallen brothers, by whatever means necessary. It was them against the world. For years he kept their dignity up and their noses clean. The Sons ran the neighborhood, then the town, then the city.
Then people started to die.
Teach lost control of the club he had helped form. And then came the crackdown by the police. In spite of the Teach"s best efforts, the lure of drugs and guns got too big for the rest of the brothers. War broke out, the Sons lost and Teach fled to Philadelphia. He tried to reform his ideal brotherhood from the wreckage. Keeping your head down and out of trouble was the first order of business for the new incarnation of the Sons.
J. remembered his fight with the guard last night and wondered if he should tell Teach about it. It was the kind of thing the President liked to keep a close eye on. The Philadelphia police were just itching for a chance to rain down on the Sons and shut the whole club down once and for all.
Teach was watching J., waiting for him to respond. The old man"s placid gaze was just as it was in the prison cla.s.sroom; implacable, stoic. He was a man who was content to wait forever for what he wanted.
Quickly J. nodded again. "Yeah, I know the story. The Steelworks. Your dad got real bad."
"Real bad. Left us a bunch of times. Always broke my mama"s heart too. She had six kids clinging to her skirts and no one to depend on. One time he came back after being gone nearly two weeks, and I had had enough. My mama cryin", my little brothers and sisters asking when he"d be back and us not knowing. I called him out."
"You fought your dad?"
Teach nodded, his face unchanged, but his eyes registering old and deep pain. "We had a patch of lawn in front of our house. Everyone in the neighborhood had these little iron porches. Evening time, after supper, the whole neighborhood would be sittin" out there watchin" the kids run up and down, tumbling around like puppies. That little grid of streets was the whole world to us. So when my daddy finally came home that day, I sat with him at dinner time, I listened to his apologies. And then I stood up from the table and told him to step outside.
"Now my dad wasn"t a bad man. But he had his pride. I knew I had to hit him where it hurt. I told him to meet me on the front lawn in five minutes to take his lumps. Well of course he"s ready to beat me down for my insolence. But when we get out there and the whole neighborhood"s watching, he suddenly felt that shame. And I used it. I yelled out all my bad feelings at him, right there in front of the world. I made him hear what I needed to say in the place that would hurt him the most."
"He didn"t whoop you?"
"Oh I think he wanted to. But everything I said was true. He wasn"t being a man, wasn"t being a father. From that day on, he never left us again. Found work in a grocery store that didn"t pay nearly as good, but I was fourteen by then and could start bringing home some money to help. Started working at the auto repair place a month later."
J. shifted on his feet. "So what"re you telling me here?"
Teach sat back on his stool. "I"m saying that you need to say what"s gotta be said. Your mama may be sick for real this time. But you can"t know until you talk to her." Teach leaned against the counter, looking very tired all of a sudden. "I"m saying you gotta decide to move on, J. The past can"t define you anymore."
J."s mind was blank. There wasn"t anything else to say. Teach was right. He knew that.
But actually going through with it was a different story.
It was a gorgeous summer"s day outside and he had a custom chopper that needed to be put through its paces before delivery. A ride would clear his head, he told himself. A ride would tell him what to do next.
"What"re you thinking?" Teach prodded.
J. shook his head. "I"m thinking about it," he lied. "But today"s not the day. I got that delivery."
Teach sighed, then nodded in resignation. He went over to the file cabinet where he kept open orders. "How you gonna get back if you ride the customer"s chopper?"
J. scoffed. "The El goes right over our heads. And failing that, my feet work."
Teach grunted. "You"re avoiding."
"Yeah, a little I guess," J. grinned winningly but the old man wasn"t buying it. He grunted angrily and turned his back to J. for a moment, letting the younger man cool his heels. J. waited, familiar with this tactic.
Teach finally pulled out the white carbon copy and squinted, holding it out at arm"s length. "219 South 18th Street," he read.
J. felt a frission run through his body. "That in Rittenhouse?"
"Right the f.u.c.k on the Square," Teach nodded.
J. remembered the address on Emmy"s ID. He remembered the guard and the gla.s.s doors and the stares of the people on the sidewalk. He would be crazy to go back there.
"Got it," he heard himself say. "Call the guy. I"ll have it outside by ten."
Chapter 14.
Emmy Our standoff felt like it had taken hours - me feigning sleep, Robert watching me feign sleep. He had finally left, his heavy tread sounding across the floorboards as loud as thunder. I lay motionless until I heard the ding of the elevator, then lay motionless for even longer.
When I was absolutely sure he had left for work, I finally dared to open my eyes.
Panic coursed through my veins like flashes of silver minnows. I thought about calling Sammie, but the shame of confessing my relationship troubles was too much to overcome.
Then I thought about J.
The patch on his back had said "Sons of Steel." Maybe that was a way I could find him. Maybe he would listen to me for a while. Maybe he would kiss me again and tamp down the fear for just a moment. Maybe he could hold me in those strong arms and keep me safe from the h.e.l.l of my own making.
Maybe I was f.u.c.king crazy.
I wracked my brain trying to remember how I got home last night. I remembered the kiss - that I would never forget as long as I lived - and then I remember getting very sleepy. I remembered him telling me to hold on...and I remembered that when he said it he sounded angry.
Sudden doubt rushed into my fantasy. J. was angry with me. I was suddenly certain of that. Something I had done, or said, was wrong and I had messed up the nicest thing to happen to me in months. Maybe the nicest thing ever.
I licked the corner of my lips and tasted my tears.
I was alone.
Sitting up carefully, a tiny ghost of a plan began to materialize in my head. If I lay in the bed any longer I would go crazy for sure. I would shower and dress. I would go out into the world and be with other people. I would go somewhere for myself.
Immediately I knew where I wanted to go.