DIESEL DADDY Page 2

  She’s young, maybe twenty, maybe a couple of years older, with dark blonde hair done up like a Viking shieldmaiden’s, all intricate along the sides, more braids than I can count. Thin, but not skinny, she’s wearing a fashionable get-up I’ve never seen in any of the club women. Her top is some kind of red weave over two matching layers, her bottom dark red jeans, her boots the color of a sunset. She looks classy, cool, not the type of girl who should be in here at all. I watch her without watching her—I learned how to do that a long time ago—as she sits at a table across from me and tries to watch me without watching me. I’m much better at it than she is.

  I walk over to her quickly, not giving her a chance to react. Just then a bunch of assholes come barging in, frat types, and trailing right after them what seems like all of LA, filling up the tables. Looking around, I can see that three separate parties have come in at the same time, dumb luck, making the place loud and boisterous.

  “You didn’t order a drink,” I say, looking down at her.

  “Excuse me?” She smiles tightly. I can tell she’s thinking: He’s onto me. Which is damn funny, because I’ve been onto her all along.

  I gesture at the empty table in front of her. “You didn’t buy a drink. Why’d you come into a bar like this and not buy a drink? That’s the only reason a woman like you would come into a bar like this, I reckon. I’ve been doing this for a while now. I know when someone’s following me.”

  She stands up, holding her hands up, shaking her head. I can’t help but smile. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says.

  “Right. So you didn’t see me standing outside your apartment building, and you didn’t follow me down the street, and the sky ain’t blue in summer, and we get one hundred days of snow a year. Come on, let me buy you a drink.”

  I might as well have some fun with her before sending her on her way. I wouldn’t normally be so friendly with someone who’s following me, but the people who usually follow me don’t look like her. She walks ahead of me to the bar, looking confused as she glances back. All I can look at is her lithe body, her legs tight as hell in those jeans. She’s definitely one worth toying with.

  “What’ll you have?” I ask. I have to raise my voice now because the jukebox is blaring. Across the room, men chant and stamp their feet. “Drink! Drink! Drink!”

  “I shouldn’t have anything.” She glances to me and then at her feet, and then back to me. I just stare at her. Sometimes silence does all the work for me in my business. “Okay, I’ll have a vodka and coke.”

  I order another whisky for myself and a drink for the follower.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Willa. And yours?”

  I tell her.

  “What kind of name is Diesel? What’s your real name?”

  “Diesel, ma’am. I changed it legally a while back.”

  “Oh.”

  When we get back to our table, it turns out that three frat fucks have decided they want it for themselves. Willa makes as if to return to the bar—there are no other seats—but I walk to the edge of the table and point down at her handbag, which has been kicked to the floor. “This yours?”

  She gasps. “I must’ve left it. Oh, excuse me.”

  The head frat fuck—they always have leaders, these assholes—is flat-faced and looks at Willa in a way that makes me angry, because even if we just met, I’m with her. “You knocked my friend’s bag to the floor. This is our table.”

  Flat Face laughs. “Move on, buddy.”

  His two friends are more sober than him. They look at each other awkwardly, sizing me up. “Mark …”

  “What?” flat-faced Mark snaps. “The fuck’s the matter with you?”

  “We’re sitting here,” I say.

  “Don’t make me stand up, pal—”

  I lift him by his neck, holding him so his feet kick an inch from the floor. He looks down the length of my arm with wide, shocked eyes. His friends back away, retreating to the edge of the table. When he’s scared enough, I put him down. “Don’t do anything stupid now.”

  He looks like he might, but then thinks better of it and scuttles away.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Willa says, collecting her things and returning to her seat. Her eyes are blue with a fleck of brown, and they’re full of excitement. So she enjoyed that, then. Interesting.

  I sit opposite her. “I know I didn’t.” I take a matchstick from my pocket and put it in my mouth, chewing the wooden end. Maybe this is a bad habit I need to stop, but judging by the look Willa gives me, I’m not going to be stopping anytime soon. She looks excited again, as though she’s hungry for danger. “You need to stop looking at me like that.”

  She sips her vodka. I reckon it’s so she doesn’t have to answer right away. “Like what?” she says.

  “Like you want me to bend you over this table …” I trail off, laughing. “I almost forgot that I was a gentleman then.”

  She smiles, and then wipes the smile off her face. It’s like she doesn’t want to be smiling but can’t help it. “Diesel,” she says. She takes another sip. Then she looks down at her glass, which is empty. “Oh.”

  “Diesel … oh?” I laugh again. She’s cute as hell. There’s no denying that. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m going to get another drink,” she says, standing up.

  “Hang on. Protect the table.”

  I go to the bar and return with a vodka and coke.

  “Thank you.” She smiles at me as she takes it. “I wasn’t following you, by the way.”

  “Right.”

  “I wasn’t. I was just … I was just curious. Sue me.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  She squints at me. “Something tells me suing isn’t your style.”

  Looking at her gets me thinking on a topic that hounded me night and day in prison. I’d lie there at night smoothing over the scars on my chest, my arms, feeling the newer ones from the prison fighting and the older ones from the old man, remembering my childhood and wondering what it’d be like to do it all over. A second chance ain’t gonna happen for me. I’m too deep into the life. But a kid, I thought … a kid would be the chance I want. A kid would be my opportunity to do my life all over again. A kid, I could treat well, not like my old man. A kid, I could protect.

  “What do you think about children?” I say, dropping it casually. I don’t care about her answer, I tell myself. But if that’s really the case then I shouldn’t be leaning forward like this, or watching her lips so closely, or remembering every evil thing my proud policeman father ever did to me.

  “What do you mean?” she asks. “Children are nice, I guess. Do you mean do I ever want them?”

  I nod, trying to make sure I don’t seem eager. A man like me has to always seem laidback, like nothing can get to me.

  “It’s funny you say that.” She giggles, takes a sip, giggles again. It’s mesmerizing. “I’ve been thinking about having kids lately. I don’t know if it’s because I never had much of a family, you know? My dad died of cancer when I was ten and my mom died a year later in a car accident and—oh my god.” She shoots dagger-eyes at her vodka. “I don’t drink very often, and now look at me. I don’t even know you. Oh my god. What am I doing? I should just get up and walk out of here. I shouldn’t overshare like that.”

  “It’s fine,” I say. “What were you saying? You don’t need to be embarrassed. Like you said, you don’t know me, so what’re you losing by talking to me?”

  “That actually makes some kind of warped sense.” She nods. “But I think I’ll need another drink.”

  I drain my whisky, placing my matchstick on the table. “I’ll second you on that one.”

  I’m having way more fun than I thought I would. I thought I’d just toy with her a little, but this is turning into something else. I have to remember Grimace. He’s the president, after all. And when Grimace gives me orders, it’s my job to carry them out, especially since my time in the slammer means I�
�m not exactly fighting off other jobs. I push that to the back of my mind and get the drinks. As I walk across the bar back to the table, I look at this Willa, at her legs stretched out beneath the table, her blue-brown eyes full of life, and I wonder what she’d look like panting, what she’d sound like moaning.

  “Where were we?” she asks, sipping.

  “Kids,” I say. My heart is beating fast for some reason, faster than it did when three guys started something in the food line and I had to tool all three of them up.

  “Oh, yeah. I never had much of a family. I was raised by my grandmother after Mom and Dad, and then she died, and so, yeah … I don’t want to be a downer, but sometimes I wish I had a little boy or girl of my own so I could be there for them like my parents weren’t—not that it was their fault! It’s just … Please, stop me.”

  “A game of pool?” I say.

  My mind is on overdrive. What she just said is basically how I feel. What’re the chances that this stranger would feel the same as me, down to the root impulse? What are the chances that some random girl in a building Grimace wants burned to the ground would be so damn captivating?

  I let her win the game of pool. At least, that’s what I tell myself. But as she pots the black, I don’t know if that’s the truth, or if I’m just too busy watching her stalk around the table, bend over, smile, and sip to care.

  Chapter Three

  Willa

  Before we go to the pool table, I slip the matchstick into my pocket. I’m not sure what compels me to do this. I’m not sure if it’s just the vodka—which is doing some serious work on me; I need to slow down—or if some other hidden urge prompts me to do it. All I know is I’m having a good time, a far better time than I should be having considering my position. I should be mentally recording this man so that I can tell everyone at work about him tomorrow, but I’m past that point now. I’m no longer playing the journalist.

  We end up outside after the game, leaning against the wall. Diesel strikes a match and lights a cigarette. He’s nothing like the boys from college, I reflect as I watch him. He’s gruff and slightly mean-looking. He looks like the kind of man who’d do bad things to get what he wanted. I remember the way he picked that guy off his feet, just lifted him up like it was nothing, his eyes dead. But when he asked me about kids, his dark green eyes weren’t dead. They were alive. They were full of life. They were more full of life than they’ve been all evening.

  “Why’d you ask me about kids?” I say. I can hear the slur in my voice. The sun hasn’t even set yet. I don’t think we were in there for more than an hour. But an empty stomach and vodka will never mix well together.

  “Just making conversation.” He takes a drag on his cigarette.

  I’ve never been a fan of smoking. So it isn’t a huge leap in logic for me to reach up, pluck the cigarette from between his lips, and toss it to the curb. I just don’t know where I get the confidence to do it, or what makes me feel like this stranger and I are close enough for me to be able to get away with it. I’ll blame it on the vodka, I tell myself.

  “That’s a lie,” I say. “There’s more to it than that.”

  “Are you a mind reader now?” He reaches for his jacket pocket.

  “If you take out another cigarette, I’m going to hurt you.”

  He turns to fully face me, grinning. “You’re going to hurt me,” he says, and I can tell he’s struggling not to laugh. “You’re going to hurt me. As in … you’re going to cause me pain. As in … you’re going to take me down, Willa?”

  I stand on my tiptoes and look into his eyes. “I just said that, didn’t I? Now tell me, big, scary, Skull Rider man, why are you so interested in kids?”

  “Goddamn, are you always like this? I was just making conversation.”

  “I don’t believe you. I think there’s something else going on here.”

  He steps forward so that his chest is pressing right into me, his leather hard and cold through the fabric of my clothes. “You’re starting something with me. Is that it, little lady?”

  “Little lady?” I laugh right in his face. “This isn’t the fifties, asshole.”

  “You haven’t asked me the most important question of all yet, little lady.”

  “Yeah, and what’s that?”

  My heart is pounding heavily, my palms sweaty. I don’t know if I can blame it all on the vodka anymore. He leans down so that we’re staring eye to eye. His breath tickles my lips, my face. “You haven’t asked me what your prize is for winning at pool.” He takes another step forward so that now our bodies are pressed firmly together. The wall hits my back. I’m trapped. Who knew that being trapped could feel so good?

  “What’s my prize?” I whisper.

  He presses his lips against mine, hard, the way a man kisses when he wants to own you. He kisses me so hard that for a few seconds I don’t think, I can’t think. All I can do is press back, hoping to match the intensity, caught up in the madness of the moment. His lips taste like smoke and man, but it’s a beautiful taste, a taste that sends fingers of pleasure trailing all over my body, around my neck and down to my nipples, hardening them. I want to reach down and grab the front of his pants, see if he’s hard for me, feel the hardness. But then he’s stepping away, a strange look on his face.

  “I’ve got to go,” he says. “And I need you to do me a favor.”

  “What?” I ask, wondering why he’s not close to me anymore, wishing he would be. The aftertaste of the kiss is almost as sweet as the kiss itself.

  He looks at me sternly. His lips twitch. It’s like there are dozens of things he wants to say but only a few he can actually say. “Stay in the bar a while,” he says. “Have another drink. Give it half an hour.”

  “What?”

  He lurches close to me, interrupting my nervous laugh. “Stay in the bar, Willa. I’m safe but stay in the bar, all right? Promise me.”

  Stunned, confused, cogs turning in my mind—matchstick pressing through my pocket into my thigh—I nod. “I’ll stay in the bar,” I mutter.

  “Good.”

  He turns, pacing down the street, back toward his bike, back toward my apartment building.

  I know I should chase after him, or call the police … but what will I say to then? Gossip and suspicions don’t make a fire real. The real reason rears up as I go to the bar, get another vodka. I should call the police, but I don’t want to get Diesel in trouble. The absurdity of the idea doesn’t seem to make it any less real. I tell myself I’ve known him for an hour. I tell myself I owe him nothing. I tell myself the kiss was just a kiss. And yet, sitting here halfway through one too many vodkas, I can’t believe any of it.

  In the bathroom, staring in the mirror, I laugh at my reflection. This is so silly. This is like a dream. Everything that’s happened today since I got off the bus is like something I would invent when I was a teenager, when all my friends were talking about their moms and dads and I would tell made-up stories about all the fascinating things I did on the weekends so I didn’t feel left out. It was amazing. At the age of thirteen I was a catwalk model, a secret agent, a bestselling author, and an astronaut.

  I have to focus on my walking as I leave the bar, which is how I know I definitely shouldn’t have had that last vodka. I take it one step at a time, walking slowly on purpose. The rumors, the man called Diesel … it fits together so easily. And yet I can’t believe it.

  I feel like an idiot when I see the first wisps of smoke kissing the sky. I try and tell myself they’re not coming from my apartment building, that this can’t be happening, no way, not to my apartment building, not to the building which has stood strong every day for the past year. Then I’m in the street and I see around one hundred people gathered outside, the flickering of emergency lights, firehoses spraying powerful jets of water at the building, trying to tame the flames. Firefighters move around like soldiers.

  I approach Mr. Corby, a neighbor I vaguely know. He’s an old man and once or twice I’ve carried his shoppin
g up to the first floor to him. He’s a glasses-wearing, jacket-wearing, mustache-wearing Englishman. He looks odd standing there in a bathrobe with pictures of dogs all over it.

  “Is everybody out?” I bark. I have to know that. If not, I need to find a police officer. There are enough of them around.

  “Oh, Wilma.”

  “Willa …”

  “Wilma, it was the strangest thing I’ve witnessed in all my long and venerable years.”

  That’s right, I remember. Mr. Corby talks as if he’s reciting a sonnet.

  “I was sitting in my flat and there came a knock at the door. It was the building manager, you know, Mr. Terry, and I told him to go away. Five minutes later he is back, banging on my door with the fury of thunder, and so I open the door and ask him what has got into his nut head. He tells me, quite rudely, that we have ten minutes to evacuate the building, to get anything with sentimental value, and this is the strangest part … to keep a record of those who do not have renter’s insurance so that they may be reimbursed. Luckily, we all have renter’s insurance. So, confused, we all stand in the street, and then—whoosh, Wilma, whoosh—the place bursts into flames. Odd, isn’t it?”