I rubbed my eyes. I was tired, but also restless. My skin was literally itching to move the fuck on past all the fucking problems and move onto the solutions.
Like putting a fucking bullet in Eli.
Ideally I’d like to do it without even stopping the fucking car, and then hightail it back to Pup. Then, we can figure the Max thing out.
Together.
“You got any space left?” I called over to Bear, who was lying face down on the couch. We were in the apartment he’d built for himself in my garage. With no windows and only a single door in and out it made us feel less like sitting ducks than the main house.
Bear spoke into the cushion, listing the parts of his body that weren’t already covered with ink. “Some on my neck, the inside of my right arm, couple of fingers I think…and my dick, but you ain’t my type, fucker, so hands off.”
He can’t tattoo you’re dick, Bear. He doesn’t do micro portraits.
I laughed at the sound of Preppy’s voice in my head and took another hit of the joint Bear and I’d been passing back and forth. “What’s so fucking funny?” He asked, lifting his head from the cushion. His eyes rimmed in red.
“Prep,” I said, holding the smoke in my lungs as long as I could, letting it burn in my chest until I had no choice but to blow it out. “This is fucked up, but…I still hear him sometimes.”
Bear sat up and took the joint, taking three hits before leaning back on the couch with his arms spread across the back of the cushions. “I know what you mean. Me too. He’s always been there to break up all the heavy shit we’re all stewing in. Now that he ain’t here, it’s just all heavy shit…and no Prep.”
The plan had been to take a night and get some rest before going back to it. I’d tossed and turned for hours, knowing that until Pup was back in my bed that I’d never have a good night sleep again.
I heard Bear grunting, doing his own tossing and turning.
So finally, we’d just quit trying.
For three hours we’d been getting high, and for a while it was almost like old times when me, Bear, and Preppy, had spent many nights the exact same way. Except without Preppy. And just like those times, I’d broken out my tattoo gun.
“You ready to do this?” I asked, holding up the gun, using the foot pedal to make it buzz in the air.
“Fuck, yeah. Ink me, bitch,” Bear came over and sat on a stack of tires he used as a makeshift coffee table with his back to me. With his chin on his chest he reached behind his head, moving aside his hair. He touched his fingers to one of the few unmarked spots of skin on his body. “Right there man.”
I went in freehand and forty minutes later Bear had a new tattoo in big bold lettering.
PREP
He didn’t even ask to see it before he fell back on the couch. He lit a cigarette and poured out some white powder from a little bag onto the table, cutting it into lines with a razor blade, using a rolled up dollar bill he snorted two lines. Pinching his nostrils together, Bear chuckled. “Remember that time I jumped off the roof of the garage into the bay? Man, that shit was epic”
“I remember,” I said, shaking my head when Bear tried handing me the rolled up bill. “Preppy about had a coronary when you threw him in the water. Had his white suspenders dry cleaned three times that week.”
Bear looked as tired as I did but there was more to it than just a lack of sleep. I’d never seen him look so worn out. “What’s got you all inside out? You haven’t been right for a while. Even before shit when down with Preppy. What the fuck is up with you?” I asked.
Bear sighed, resting his hand holding his cigarette against his temple. “Pops wants to pass me the gavel.”
“Hasn’t that always been the plan?”
Bear shrugged. “Yeah, when he died or was like ninety. Even then part of me thought he would be buried with that fucking gavel in his stiff hands. But he wants to pass it to me…now.”
“I still don’t understand. What’s the fucking problem?”
Bear stood up and started to pace back and forth in front of the couch. “To be honest man? I’m just not sure I want it anymore. What made sense when I patched in don’t make much sense anymore. Shit’s changing. In the club. Out of the club. Things just ain’t how I thought they’d be,” Bear said, looking absently at the ceiling. He shook his head as if he were clearing the fog away. “Maybe I just need some pussy,” he said, “maybe when all this shit’s over I’ll text that British chick Jodi. She fucks like a champ and prefers it in the ass.”
“Some random chick ain’t gonna fix shit,” I said.
“I know, but my cock in her ass will at least make me forget for a while.” Bear plopped back down on the couch. He scratched at his arm. I guess I wasn’t the only one restless and itching to get this shit over with.
“Mind if I ask you something?” Bear leaned forward, grabbing his smokes from the table. He didn’t wait for my answer. “Why is Doe the one that’s got your fucking guts all torn in pieces, when you used to go through a bitch or two a day? Sometimes at the same fucking time,” Bear lamented.
I raised my eyebrows. “We gonna sit around and talk about our fucking feelings now?”
“I mean, she’s fucking beautiful, man. And I’ve called girls hot, sexy, trashy, but in an I’d-still-fuck-your-trailer-park-ass type of way. She’s different. A girl like her should be far far away from anyone who even resembles Florida white trash like us.”
I unholstered my gun and set it on the table. “You about to say something I’m gonna need this for?” I asked.
But it was what he wasn’t saying, which was written all over his blonde bearded face, which was really pissing me off.
He wanted to protect Pup.
Because he loved her.
I wanted to empty the chamber of my gun into his fucking chest, but I didn’t. Because I understood. ’Cause Pup was everything in one beautiful fucking package, and it wasn’t her fault that more than just me saw that, and it wasn’t Bear’s fault that he’d felt it too. But it would be his fault if he ever acted on it.
If he ever touched her, I could be standing over his dead body, holding the smoking gun, and I still wouldn’t feel the least bit guilty, because it would be that motherfucker’s own fault if I had to put him down.
Bear knew this.
“Fuck you and your gun,” Bear scoffed, “you already know I liked her from the beginning.” He ashed his cigarette into an empty beer bottle. “I regret sending her up the stairs to you that night. Not keeping her for myself.” There was a lingering sadness in his voice. “And then when you fucked it all up by almost getting your cock wet, I’d never been more fucking pissed then when you showed back up at the dock.” Bear took another drag of his cigarette. “Way I see it, you owe me motherfucker.”
Bear sending her up to my room that night being the reason I ever set eyes on Pup, was the only reason why my fist hadn’t yet connected with his nose.
We needed a change in conversation before I did something we’d both regret. Me, because he was my friend. Him, ’cause he’d be full of fucking bullets.
“You still haven’t answered the question, motherfucker.” Bear leaned forward. “Why her?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “It’s just another fact. Just like the sky is blue. The grass is green.” I shrugged. “She’s mine. Just is. Just know it.”
“You ever think she deserves better than this shit?” Bear waved his hand around the room. “Than you?” I flashed him a questioning look. If I was on edge before this conversation, I was teetering off of it now. “Not me, motherfucker. Just…better. Than this. Than this life.”
“’Course.” I lit a cigarette and inhaled, tossing the lighter onto the table. And then I looked up and Bear and smiled.
“But she doesn’t have better…she has me.”
I’d barely gotten the words out of my mouth when concrete and steel came crashing down around us, flying into the apartment like a tornado was ripping through.
I ducked; crawling on my stomach I sought cover behind the coffee table. I coughed as I inhaled one lungful of dust after the other. I squinted, looking past the settling debris toward where the crash had sounded.
There was a gaping hole where the wall had stood only seconds before.
The remnants of that wall; a huge pile of toppled concrete block, covered the living room.
And the couch that had been against that wall.
And the person that had been lying on the couch.
Bear.
Chapter Eight
Doe
It was too early. Or too late.
Or too, something.
I’d finally had a memory of someone pre-memory loss and it was of someone I knew post memory loss.
Nikki.
My best friend since I was in diapers. Who was also the hooker who’d acted like she was doing me a favor by letting me tag along while we both tried to survive on the streets.
There was no doubt in my mind that it was the connection of my past and present that helped me to remember. It was the only thing that was clear to me. Everything else was like driving a car, with a muddied windshield, trying to look through the smears to see the road.