He Started It

‘Even a plain background would be better,’ Portia says.

The placement of the selfie – of any selfie – takes a while. We test and delete a variety of backgrounds, both inside and out, by the car and by the motel sign. It’s too tall and impossible to get in a selfie. Even when we angle the phone, it doesn’t come out right.

‘You know,’ Portia says. ‘The floral wallpaper is actually kind of funny. You could make fun of how kitsch it is.’

We end up back where we started, squished together in front of the floral wall in our room. Click, check, delete. Click, check, delete. We repeat this until we’re all happy with the picture.

‘You’re doing this for Felix, right?’ Portia says. ‘To show him you’re having fun.’

‘Exactly,’ I say.

I post the picture, along with the tag: Current mood: 80’s wallpaper, 90’s rock, & both my siblings.

Within minutes, people start liking it. It’s only been a few days since I posted but you’d think I’d been in Siberia. The people I know are the kind who pay attention to their social media all the time.

I take a shower, and when I get out, Portia is in our bed and already asleep. Eddie is about to turn off his bedside lamp. Before he does, he says, ‘You good?’

‘I’m good.’

Portia doesn’t move.

I get into bed, place my phone facedown, and fall asleep in an instant. The knocking at the door wakes me up.

The pounding, I should say. Like someone is using the back of their fist against the door. Three times. The first woke me up. It woke all of us up.

Eddie is the first to get out of bed. Rather, he jumps up, walks across our bed, and lands by the door. The pounding stops as he gets there.

‘Don’t open it,’ I say.

He opens it.

I picture a giant man, maybe a logger with a thick beard and a plaid shirt, because yes, I stereotype. Instead, it’s a woman. A rather petite woman with auburn hair.

‘You Dylan?’ she says.

‘What?’ Eddie says.

‘Dylan. Are. You. Dylan.’

Eddie’s face turns from confusion to anger. ‘No.’

‘You sure?’ she says.

‘Very.’

She walks away. Eddie slams the door just as Portia says, ‘You think she threw her whole body against the door to knock that hard?’

Auburn hair.

Like the woman in the back of the pickup.

I think about saying something when Eddie yelps after stubbing his toe trying to get back into his bed. No one else says a word about her, or even seems to recognize her. Maybe I’m wrong.

‘Did that woman look familiar?’ I ask.

‘No,’ Eddie says.

‘No,’ Portia says.

Just me, then. And it definitely wasn’t Nikki.

Eddie rustles around in his duffel bag, Portia checks her phone, and eventually the room goes quiet. I’m already drifting off when she pounds on the door again. Three times, hard.

Portia is faster than Eddie this time. She throws off the covers and gets to the door in one big leap. She’s already yelling when she opens the door.

‘Goddammit, there’s no Dylan –’

The auburn-haired woman is not standing in front of our door but two men are, and I recognize them immediately. The Alabama Godfather and the other guy, the younger one. Both of them are smiling.

Then I spot her. The woman stands behind them, the scout for this little operation.

Portia tries to shut the door, but the younger man steps forward, blocking the doorway.

I jump out of the bed and grab Portia, pulling her away from the door and away from these men. They’re both inside now. The younger one shuts the door and the Godfather looks at Portia.

‘What were you saying, honey?’ His voice is as annoying as I remember, Southern accent and all.

‘I was saying get the hell out of our room.’ Portia spits the words out.

The Godfather laughs, his friend joins in. I glance over at the nightstand, wishing I had grabbed my phone.

Behind me, I hear Eddie moving. Now he’s out of bed.

‘Let’s all calm down,’ the young man says. He keeps his eyes on Portia, who looks like she’s going to leap forward and attack him. ‘You, little hellcat, how about you don’t move and then we won’t have to hurt you?’

I feel Portia’s body tense. I grip the back of her shirt with one hand and her arm with the other. She doesn’t move, though it feels like she will.

‘Good kitty,’ the young guy says.

‘What the hell did you just call me?’ She tries to take a step forward. Instead, he does.

‘I called you a –’

‘Stop.’

Eddie. His voice cuts above everyone else’s, and I’m just about to laugh when I see the gun. In Eddie’s hand.

This takes my breath away.

A memory of the past hits me, as swift and hard as any punch. It stuns me and I do not move.

Portia pushes me out of the way, getting both of us out of the line of fire. Now there’s an open space between Eddie and the two men. Neither is holding a gun. If they have one, they were too late on the draw, because it looks like we’re in a Western now.

‘Eddie,’ the Godfather says.

‘Eddie?’ Portia says.

The Godfather looks only at Eddie and the weapon in his hand. ‘There’s no reason to bring a gun into this.’

‘You just broke into our room,’ Eddie says. ‘I’d say this is a perfect time for a gun.’

The Godfather shrugs. ‘We thought we lost you when you decided to go camping. Now that we’ve found you again, I didn’t want to make that mistake again.’

Eddie snorts.

‘Excuse me,’ Portia says. ‘But what the fuck is happening?’

The Godfather raises his eyebrow at Eddie and the young guy laughs. ‘I guess Eddie didn’t tell you he knows us.’

I’ve been listening and watching like this is a movie and not really happening, but somewhere deep in my mind, the wheels have been churning along, processing it all. Portia telling me about Eddie arguing with someone on the phone about money, then watching him yell at someone on the phone at the gas station. The answer comes all at once.

‘Eddie owes you money,’ I say to the Godfather.

‘Ding ding ding,’ the young guy says.

‘Thank God one of you was born smart,’ the Godfather says. ‘You hit it on the nose. Eddie owes us money.’

‘And I’ll pay it. You know I will,’ Eddie says.

Portia throws her hands up in the air. ‘I … I don’t even know what to say right now. I can’t. I just can’t.’ With that, she stomps off into the tiny motel bathroom and slams the door.

That left the Godfather, the young guy, Eddie, and me to figure out what would come next.

Real talk.

Sometimes assumptions are wrong, as mine are in this case, because that young Alabama guy is smarter than I thought. When we were all distracted by Portia’s yelling and storming off into the bathroom, he moved his hand real slow. Too slow to notice, until he already has the gun out.

Now we’re in a motel room with two guns, and it really does look like a movie. There’s Eddie, the preppy guy with the shiny chrome gun. Me, in my shorts and Jacksonville Jaguars shirt that used to be Felix’s but is now mine. A young guy with a gun, a beard, and a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt. Finally, the Godfather. He looks about sixty but may be younger, with a grey beard and deep lines around his eyes. The Godfather is the only one smiling.