In to Her
And Damon took it all away just because he could.
What a dick he is. Why hasn’t anyone killed him yet?
It’s a dumb question because the answer is obvious. No matter how much people dislike the guy, he’s in charge. And you can’t ever be sure who will remain loyal to save their own ass and who will stand up and fight for something better.
So no one tries.
I mean… I could’ve killed him plenty of times. AJ too. But we never have. Says a lot about us, I guess.
“Besides,” AJ continues, “we bonded on the dance floor yesterday.”
Yvette smiles, presumably at the memory of the dance, or maybe the first fuck that came after. But she doesn’t say anything. Just concentrates on my shave. Gently dragging the razor across my jaw, then tapping it into the bowl of water, and every few strokes placing her warm palm against my cheek to check for smoothness.
“Tell me something,” she says.
“Tell you what?” AJ asks.
“I dunno. Something about you guys. If we’re going to run away together I should know you a little better.”
Are we going to run away together? Did we actually come to this conclusion?
“OK,” AJ says. “What do you want to know?”
“Have you always loved each other?”
I can’t stop the laugh.
“What’s so funny?” she asks.
“I mean… love?” I laugh again.
She stops working and looks down at me. “You don’t love him?”
I glance over at AJ, looking for help. But he just shrugs. “Well… sure, I guess.”
“You kiss him,” she says.
“Yeah. I kiss lots of people.”
“So AJ’s just a one-night stand? No different than some random girl you pick up in a bar?”
And now I don’t know if she’s the random girl in this hypothetical, or if she’s talking about other random girls. I sigh. “I like him.”
“Enough to fuck a girl with him, so… obviously. But what else? If you don’t love him, how do you feel about him?”
“Do we have to talk about feelings?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says, squirting a new dollop of shaving cream on the other side of my face. “We’re about to fuck up each other’s lives in a major way. I think it’s good to go into this knowing how we feel about each other, don’t you?”
“I dunno,” I say. Because I don’t do feelings. And I definitely don’t talk about them.
“We don’t even know each other,” Yvette says.
“We kinda know you,” AJ replies. “We’ve been watching you for a while now.”
“Not inside the bar. I never saw you.”
“No, just following you when you go places.”
“Because you wanted to see if I knew where the baby was?” she asks.
I suck in a deep breath, really uncomfortable with this conversation.
“We didn’t know about the baby,” AJ replies.
“Then why were you here?”
“We just…” AJ looks at me for help. Because he doesn’t really know why we’re here. “Uh… you gonna handle this, Logan?”
I clear my throat to give myself a second to think up some plausible answer. Then just toe the line and say the script. “He told me he was looking for something you had. And I’d know it when I saw it.”
“Hmm,” she says. “Sounds pretty cryptic if you ask me. Maybe almost suspiciously vague.”
“Yeah,” AJ says. “It does.” His eyes meet mine and they’re suddenly worried. “You don’t think he’s got other plans for us, do you?”
Shit. “What do you mean?”
“I dunno. Like… why are we here?”
Yvette stops to clean the razor in the bowl of water, then stares down at me. “Aside from killing me, that is.”
“That’s it,” I lie.
“That can’t be it,” AJ says. “First of all, here’s weird point number one. We haven’t worked together in a long time. Like… really long time. Couple years, at least. And weird point number two—you don’t even handle the hits anymore. That’s my job. So why send you and me? Why not me and one of my other guys?”
“I don’t know, Aje.”
“Also,” he continues, “you and I both know that when Damon says ‘You don’t need clean-up,’ that’s a bad sign. I’ve been thinking about that ever since you hung up with him yesterday. Pretty much everyone who goes into a hit without a clean-up crew gets offed in the end.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “You did a job right before we left with no clean-up crew and you made it out alive.” What I don’t say is, I sent in my own clean-up crew afterward. Because that was before I knew he was on my hit list. Those guys he was with on that last job were probably supposed to kill him and they chickened out. It’s kind of a big deal to off your boss, even when his boss tells you to. That’s what I figure, anyway. “And I already told you,” I add, “I got a guy on stand-by anyway.”
“Yeah,” AJ says, not sounding convinced.