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  “I need to know that you’re not lying,” I say. “I can’t just have some lady coming in here and pulling one over on me. Even if she is a pretty lady.” The last part just comes out. I can’t help it. She stretches her legs out as she sits there, points her shoes, highlighting her calf muscles. I wonder what it’d be like to grab those calves, to bite down on those tight thighs. Then I blot the thought. It’s not appropriate … is it? “Tell me some shit about Arsen, some shit you’d know if you were really his old lady.”

  She fidgets, stroking her kid’s head. “Um, let me think …” She looks into her kid’s face and smiles with recognition. Maybe it’s the whisky, I don’t know, but when she smiles it’s like the first bright moment in ten months. “My son’s name is Cormac, named after your uncle. We didn’t talk much, me and Arsen, not about serious stuff anyway. But he told me once that his—your—father used to hit you both. But you had an uncle called Cormac who would come over and play with him and make him laugh and joke around with him.”

  I clear my throat. There’s something at the back of it, something shaped like a ball, something which is dangerously close to a sob. I swallow it and slug some whisky to force it down. “There was never an uncle. That was a character I did for him when he was a little kid. Uncle Cormac. I’d do it after the old man went on one of his sprees, to cheer him up. I’d forgotten about that until now.”

  I rack my mind for a way she could know this without having talked with Arsen. I never mentioned Cormac to anyone since I forgot about him some point between having my first drink and fucking my first girl. Maybe Arsen mentioned it to someone and she somehow learned about it, but why?

  “You’re still suspicious,” she says. “I can see it in your face.”

  “What are you, my therapist?” I snort out a laugh, and then it’s like I hear myself. Who’s this asshole snorting out a laugh? He sounds like a drunk. I push the thought down and sit up straight, putting the bottle on the table and placing my hands on my knees. “I don’t know about this, Kayla. I just don’t see why Arsen wouldn’t’ve mentioned a girlfriend. I get it if he wanted to be private but …”

  “He told me he wanted to keep those parts of his life separate from me,” she says. “He said he didn’t want anybody to know what he did. He was—I’m sorry, but I think he was ashamed of it.”

  “Yeah.” I nod. “That’s true enough. And I can’t blame the kid. He was good. He was really, really good. He was nothing like me. He never once killed a man. He never hurt a fly, as far as I can tell.” I pick up the bottle; no point letting it sit there. “I can’t work out a way you’d know about that Cormac stuff without knowing Arsen.” And even looking at the kid, I see Arsen, the same eyes, the same cheeks, the same look of innocence. “So, yeah, I believe you, all right? That’s Arsen’s kid you’re holding. That’s my nephew.” I take one slug, two, three, enough so that my belly burns in protest. I smile at her. “Now what?”

  “Now what,” she repeats, eyes flitting over me in that curious, anxious way again, like the eyes of prey who’s just realized she’s in a predator’s den.

  Chapter Six

  Kayla

  I’m not sure what exactly I expected when I rode over here, but whatever it was, it wasn’t this. Xander—luckily the note had his name on it, because he hasn’t offered it—is around thirty, with short dark hair. His face is strong-looking, the sort of face most people would listen if he yelled, “Get down!” He has a small dimple in his chin and startling green eyes, a brightness that serves to contrast the darkness of his hair, of his demeanor. The most striking thing about him, though, are his tattoos. He’s wearing shorts and a T-shirt; tattoos cover his arms and his neck, right up to almost his chin and down to his knuckles. Snakes, skulls, spiders, dragons, all things dangerous, all things deadly. And he’s drunk, drunker than drunk. His eyes are glazed over and though he seems lucid, he also seems volatile, like there’s a furnace of emotion within him he’s just barely holding back. I should be nervous. I wonder why I’m not.

  “Well?” he says, taking yet another sip from the bottle. I’ve never seen a man drink whisky like that, like it was water. I’ve done a few shots of whisky in my life and each time I’ve had the urge to throw up right after. Xander just swigs it. “I’m guessing you came here for a reason. Or was it just for my winning conversation?” He smiles sideways at me. “Are you just gonna sit there all silent and sexy—” He cuts himself short, suddenly aware of what he’s saying.

  Sexy. Xander, calling me sexy. Xander Black, Arsen’s brother. It should freak me out. It should send me running. It should worry me. And yet it doesn’t. It does the opposite, in fact. A tingling feeling moves up my inner thighs. I’m glad that Cormac is here, a shield between us, otherwise I’m not sure what would happen.

  “I’m here to ask for help,” I say, ignoring his comment.

  “Help?” He leaps to his feet and goes into the kitchen. “Want a drink?”

  “Water,” I call back.

  “Water,” he echoes. “Help? What sort of help do you think I can give you?”

  Not for the first time, I wonder if I’m not the biggest idiot in the history of idiots. My grandmother was a very wealthy woman. When I bring her to mind, she comes to me covered in furs, a pearl necklace always at her throat, diamonds the size of eggs on her fingers. She always glittered wherever she went, lighting up whatever room she was in. She was a cold woman, in her way, private and mean when she wanted to be. But I think she loved me. Sometimes she’d talk to me about books. She promised me her fortune, but only if I got married, and now that she’s dead, all I have to do is get married to access it. And yet I’m reluctant, because I don’t want to marry just to marry. I don’t want to hitch myself to a person just for the cash. Plus, who’s to say the person I hitch myself to won’t want some of it, too? So I keep it secret, never tell anybody, and end up in situations when I’m begging for cash when I have a store of it just waiting for me.

  He returns with a glass of water for me and a fresh bottle of whisky for himself, which he opens with his teeth and takes a long swig from. There’s something tragic about the way he does it, as though his body is on autopilot and he has no choice but to let it ride him. He doesn’t looked pleased with himself as he knocks it back; it’s more like he looks apathetic, the world doesn’t matter to him anymore. Why bother trying to stay sober? My heart aches for him and I feel the sudden, and absurd, urge to reach across and touch him on the shoulder as a show of support. Instead I take a sip of water and give Cormac a kiss on the nose: a reward for being so quiet.

  “Where do I start?” I ask. “I know this might seem rude of me to show up here like this, but I really am in some deep—deep stuff here, you know?”

  “You need someone tooled up?” he asks, his voice casual, almost bored.

  “Tooled up?”

  “Beaten, killed, made to disappear. You owe money or something?” He sips his whisky. “What’s the deal?”

  I try and see Arsen in him. This is, after all, Arsen’s big brother. But although there is some of Arsen in Xander’s face, Xander has an aura completely his own. I’ve never met an outlaw before. I always assumed they would look scary, but I never guessed that the air around them would be tinged with the potential for violence. For the first time in a long time, I’m not scared. Why should I be scared when I’m sitting here with Xander? It would take a madman to come running through that door to try and hurt me, and even if they did, Xander would take care of it. I sink deeper into the couch, enjoying the freedom: freedom from fear, from anxiety.

  “Kayla?” he says. “Are you with me, beautiful?”

  Beautiful. The word just slips from his mouth. He doesn’t even seem to realize he’s said it. It’s not something he should say about his dead brother’s girl, but I don’t call him on it. Perhaps I should, but I don’t.

  “I’m here. Let me explain.”

  And so I explain it all to him. I explain about the rent and how I’m a mere week away
from being evicted. I explain about being fired from my job. I explain about the stress and the constant fear and the idea that this might be it for me, the end of the road, the place where I finally let the weight of the world crush me into the dirt. He listens with surprising attentiveness, leaning his elbows on his knees and staring at my face, staring so intensely I find myself looking away from nervousness. I wring my hands, massaging my knuckles. Once I start talking, it’s difficult to stop. All of this has just been going around and around my head. Finally, though, I force myself to bring the sad story to a close.

  “So you want money,” he says. Before I can reply he goes into his bedroom—I catch a glimpse of a made bed and not much else—and returns with suitcase. He drops it on the floor and rests his foot on it, leaning back in his chair. “How much?” he asks.

  “Um, well …” I force myself to look at him. I’m here. I’m petitioning him. The least I can do is look him in the face. “I don’t just want money. At least, I was hoping that I’d be able to—to get some, well, some help. I don’t have many friends and I don’t have any family and I’m just tired, Xander, I’m so tired all the time. I know I shouldn’t complain. I know some single mothers have two children, three, four, but nobody told me how tired I would be all the time. I’m tired in my bones. I’m tired deeper than that. I’m not sure if I believe in a soul but if I have one, I’m sure that it’s tired, too. I wouldn’t change it, of course. I wouldn’t want it any other way. I love Cormac more than anything. But that doesn’t change how I feel.”

  “Sure.” A shred of sympathy comes into his face, softening his mouth, the brightness of his eyes less like wildfire and more like a warm hearth. “I reckon I understand that. I’m pretty damn tired, too. But what do you want me to do? I’ll give you some cash and you can put the kid in daycare or whatever it is you need to do. Get a babysitter. How much do you need?”

  “He’s your nephew,” I mutter. I was hoping for more than this. I was hoping for some kind of a family, not an ATM machine. Maybe it was foolish of me to expect so much, but it’s what I was expecting and now to be met with the cold bare reality—that this man, when you get down to it, really couldn’t care less—I feel like my legs have been swept from under me. “Doesn’t that mean anything?” I go on, a note of desperation in my voice: a note I despise. The high schooler never would’ve allowed that note to enter her voice; the well-read teenager would scorn it. “Look at him. He’s got Arsen’s nose, his mouth.”

  I turn Cormac so that Xander can see him better. He looks at him for a second and then leaps to his feet, pacing to the window. “I don’t like it when women try’n manipulate me.”

  “Manipulate you?” I keep my voice low so I don’t set Cormac off, but the accusation makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, my body pricked with anger. “I’m not trying to manipulate you. I’m talking to you about your nephew.”

  “I’m no babysitter, if that’s what you’re trying to imply. I don’t spend my days in the nursery lying to the kids, telling them that the world is all roses and happiness.”

  “No. You spend your days getting wasted before midday.”

  He turns to me with a crooked smile. It’s a smile I can imagine convincing me to do many, many things. “Maybe I do.” He shrugs. “But you ought to see me when I have a busy day. I reckon you’d be less likely to come by, then.”

  “I know that you’re an outlaw,” I say. “Arsen was too.”

  Xander snorts out a laugh. “Arsen was in the club, that’s true, but to call Arsen an outlaw is an insult to the kid’s memory. He was never an outlaw. He was a courier. He kept away from the violent shit.”

  “You know what?” I stand up. “Never mind. Forget I ever came over.”

  He takes a step back, holding his hands up, his smile getting wider. “I’m always waiting for this moment when it comes to women, the fucking melodrama. You think this is a play or something? You think this is a movie? I’m gonna beg you to stay, tell you I’ve fallen for you right now, take you on a cruise around the world while pop music plays. Yeah, yeah.”

  “Stop swearing in front of Cormac!” I snap, making for the door.

  “He’s gonna be a man one day!” he says, following me. “There’s no fighting that. Arsen and me, we didn’t have much chance to be kids. Anytime we did anything kids might wanna do, our old man taught us a lesson with his fists. Life is cruel and that’s a fact. Life is the cruelest thing there is. There ain’t no fighting it.”

  “What a wonderful lesson,” I whisper, pushing the door open.

  I pace down the stairs, stomping so hard that each step resounds through the building. This is a joke. It’s pathetic. I find somebody who might be able to help me and then he accuses me, accuses me!

  I kick the door open and stride into the sunlight.

  “Asshole,” I murmur under my breath, though even in the midst of my anger I wish that that had gone better.

  Chapter Seven

  Xander

  I ought to let her walk out of here. I ought to leave her to her own devices. If she wants to act like some melodramatic actress then I ought to be fine with that. I don’t know her. I didn’t know she existed until less than half an hour ago. And she tried to use the kid on me. There’s no denying that. She turned his little face to me and tried to make me look so that I’d fall under her spell. It’s pathetic, the sort of thing only a manipulative woman’d do. No woman who really cares about her kid would pull shit like that. I reckon the whole thing’s a scam. That ain’t Arsen’s kid, Arsen’s old lady. He would’ve mentioned it.

  Yet the kid does look like Arsen, and there’s no denying the Cormac story. I walk to the front door without meaning to, which is damn strange ’cause normally I never do anything without meaning to do it. I take some cash with me, around a grand, and then run down the stairs two at a time. The sunlight blinds me as I walk onto the street, a solid ball that seems to exist only to make it more difficult for me to see. Kayla is across the other side of the street, loading her kid into an old-looking sedan, spots of rust on the fenders.

  She glances up just as she secures the kid in his chair, and then paces around the car and goes to the driver’s seat. She’s seen me, but maybe she don’t want anything to do with me now. As I jog across the road to her, I feel my body stir at the sight of her, all of her, lit up in the sun. She has the kind of hair a man can easily imagine running his hand through, the kind of legs a man can easily imagine being between. Bad thoughts, man, bad, bad thoughts, but bad thoughts are sometimes the easiest to think.

  “No need to go off in a fucking temper tantrum.”

  “Wow.” She shakes her head. “Are you always such a jerk?”

  “Here.” I toss her the bundle of cash. “How jerkish is that? That ought to keep you going for a couple of days, at least.”

  She looks down at the cash and then up at me, clearly wondering whether she can take money from me after what just happened. But then she makes the choice that most do when faced with cash or anger: she pockets the cash. “Thanks,” she says quietly. “Although I still think you acted like a real asshole up there. There was no need for that, was there? I mean, what’s your problem?”

  “That’s a long list, Kayla. But I can tell you one of my problems.” I step forward so that my body is pressed almost against hers, an inch of space between us. “You’re about the sexiest, most beautiful lady I’ve ever laid my eyes on.”

  For the first time in ten months, my mind is empty. I take her face in my hands and lean in. She purses her lips at the last moment, her body relaxing. I’ve never been much of a kisser but goddamn if this don’t feel good. Her mouth is soft, her tongue warm. It makes me wonder what else she has that is soft and warm. She’s nervous at first, kissing me softly, but then she lets out an animal-like growl and bites down on my lip. She’s the one who closes the distance between us, pressing her crotch against my leg, grinding up and down on me. I slide my hand down her back. I need to feel that tight ass, t
o squeeze it hard and feel how perky it is, to spank it, if she’s into that sort of thing, to bend her over and—

  The baby’s screams cut through the passion like a machete through muscle. Kayla cringes away from me and I do the same with her, standing a few feet apart now instead of inches. She opens her mouth to speak, closes it, and then opens it again. “I don’t know …”

  “No,” I say. “Neither do I.”

  “I don’t … Thank you for the money.”

  She gets in her car, manages to get it going after a few coughs and judders, and then pulls away from me. I watch the car go, reaching instinctively for my bottle of whisky before I remember that I didn’t bring it down with me. I stand here for a long time trying not to let my mind stray to what just happened. Then I head back up to my apartment, still blotting my mind, which is easier when a man’s drunk than when he’s sober. I take another drink but the whisky tastes sour after the taste of Kayla’s mouth. I’m still rock-hard for her, is the crazy thing, and she left five minutes ago. I think about jerking off but I can’t be bothered. It seems pointless when I just had the real thing pressed up against me, moaning, gasping. She lit up for me like a firecracker. I wish she was here now so that we could both lose ourselves in the other person. I want to feel that ass, man, just feel that sweet tight ass …