Saturday 8:17 AM
I approached the table cautiously, more cautiously than I expected myself to do, hearing all that was running through my mind. Sasha looked up at me first; her ice-blue eyes scanned me up and down as she listened to whatever Joy was saying. Then I resumed my seat next to Joy, who turned to me surprised, not angry or frustrated, but like she simply didn't know what to say for the first time.
She looked at me without a single blink, rather cold-like, patiently waiting for an explanation. I don't honestly know what had come over me either, but I wasn't about to start taking marching orders from a woman that didn't share my last name. Maybe something needed to be done about that. We were more than sex partners to me. Partners, yes, and possibly longer than we first anticipated. Impetuous, but those were the thoughts running through my head. I offered no explanation, and she didn't demand any.
"Okay, Sash, give me a number where I can reach you, and I mean anytime too, no voicemails or anything like that. This thing could turn up anywhere."
Sasha pulled a card from her purse, and with perfectly manicured red nails with what looked like Swarvoski crystals in the center of each bed, she handed it over to Joy.
"Please don't fuck with me about this," Joy insisted without a hint of jest.
"I'm out on a limb here, and I don't have time to play games."
"No games," Sasha looked concerned, looked over her cup at Joy, and I swear there were tears in her eyes, making the pale blue color of her eyes all but disappear.
"He will need me," she said softly, "and I will be there to take care of him. I can, too, you know," she finished confidently.
"I know. Just be careful. It's a crazy world out there, even for you. I'll be in touch."
With that, Joy left three ten-dollar bills on the table, tucking them under the corner of her plate, then pressed against me to slide out of the booth. I followed her prompt and stayed right behind her as we left the diner.
"I got a line on the Eddie," she said coldly as she pushed the diner door open, walking into the bright morning sun.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. A barnacle named Alabaster is driving it. He's an active little fucker, and does a lot of production work for some of these local recording artists. It's Saturday, though, and I have it on good authority that without fail, he picks up his overnight "friends," at a club on Peachtree in Midtown."
"Okay, so what? Do we have to wait? I asked, trying to keep up with her.
"Yeah, until this evening anyway. In the meantime, we need to unload that Maserati somewhere."
"What? Why the hell would you do that?"
I was incredulous.
"Because I made a deal."
It was all she offered as she climbed into the Jeep, taking the wheel. I hopped in and buckled up quickly as she was already pulling out into light morning traffic.
"We're going to leave it at a bank in Smyrna, it's open on Saturday, and it's a big bank, always people around using the ATM and stuff. Banks are usually safe drops."
Joy's eyes were dark, steeled, and focused. Her face pinched into a frustrated and pensive grimace as we made the short trip back to the warehouse. I dared to speak.
"So are we going to do that now? You aren't hungry?"
"Yes," she said.
"Yes, I mean were are going to drop the car off now. It'll be safe, and yes, I'm a little hungry, but not like I was. Don't worry about me; I'll get something later."
I kept quiet about that whole weird exchange, waiting for her to tell me about it. She didn't seem interested, though; she seemed a million miles away. And to say I was frustrated, well, that's an understatement if there ever was one.
Saturday 8:30 AM
We pulled in front of the warehouse. Joy jumped out, went inside, and immediately went to her office and worked on the computer. Again I was relegated to waiting around and wondering just what the hell had happened. What could they have possibly been talking about that would send me to the cheap seats?
My forehead was stinging like hell, so I went to the bathroom to check it out. Sure enough, it was bleeding. One of the butterflies had slipped, and the cut was not quite healed enough to stay shut yet. I fumbled around in the cabinet and found the gauze bandages and peroxide. I dreaded the thought of it but soaked a cotton ball and applied it to the small section of the open wound. The pain was intense and instant like a hornet's sting, and I yelled out.
I had to take a breath, so I sat on the John and waited for the wave of pain to subside. It wasn't but a moment or two before Joy came and found me. I opened the package of butterfly bandages and began reading the instructions.
"Why didn't you tell me you were bleeding?"
"I didn't know until I took the bandage off. It was stinging. I cleaned it out already."
She pushed my hair off of my forehead and inspected the wound.
"Well, I'll have put another one on. I'll need to clean you up a little more, and yes, it might sting a little," Joy said while cradling my neck with one hand.
"Here, Nick, lean your head back."
She took another cotton ball and swabbed it all around my forehead, following it with a dry one. Then in no time at all, she had another butterfly in place. It still stung, but I knew at least it was fixed. She put another gauze patch over the area and taped it neatly.
"There, all better," she said with a smirk, then tilted my chin up and kissed me softly, once, then lingered rubbing my nose with hers, then kissed me again.
"What happened back there? Why are we taking her car to a bank? Do you trust her?"
I had to ask. It's who I am. Something in my genetic makeup pre-disposes me of wrecking potentially romantic moments with stupid questions or inappropriate banter. Bless the girl who can ignore this.
"The answer is no, I don't trust her, no further than I can throw her, Nick."
Joy took me by the hand and led me back to the apartment and onto the couch. She sat across from me, put her legs up, and rested her feet on me, sort of holding me in place.
"You need to lay back for a few minutes and let that bandage set," she said, leaning forward and looking close.
The apartment felt good. It's incredible that it could be so cool with nothing but a fan and outside hot as hell.
"Look, I know I explained why I hate Sasha. I explained about my ex, some at least."
"Yeah, the bartender, turned Repo man, you filled me in," I agreed.
Joy scooted closer and leaned herself comfortably on the throw pillows. Her eyes were on me but not looking at me nor through me. I recognized the look in her eyes. She was channeling things from long before. I relaxed, took her calf gently in my hands, began softly rubbing, and leaned back myself.
"So I thought I had a boyfriend who loved me. What did I know? He always complimented me like no one ever had; he called me and always seemed excited to see me. He loved me. I thought so anyway. I saw him nearly every weekend; he drank a lot, did coke too, and yes, I tried it, no, I did it with him, nearly every weekend. Bad decision-making on my part to be with him. He was a bartender, an oblivious "punk" jerk, but he was kind of clever & funny. His life was a mess, but honestly, despite college, so was mine."
"But you got married," I said.
"Yes, we did get married and combined our messy, chaotic, unimportant lives. I thought it was what I wanted. I was tired of being the plain girl alone. Then one day, while driving to work, he put his hand on my knee and just said, 'I'm going to join the military, and you'll have my kids.' He didn't ask me; he just stated it, so matter of factly, it gave me the creeps.
If it wasn't apparent that I had made a mistake before, it sure as hell was then. I knew I couldn't make it with him. I couldn't have kids yet. He didn't even ask me; he just assumed, demanded, and so logically. It was so strange how he made something important to me seem so casual and unromantic. There was no way I could make it with him, not willingly."
Joy shifted again, leaning against me and pulling one of my arms across her shoulder and down between her breasts where she held it.
"If he had made a sincere gesture, maybe it could have been different. I was still fairly impressionable. But he didn't, and our lives, our marriage was anything but meaningful in general. I tried not to provide, but he pressured me. Brian wanted sex all the time; he was motivated. I wasn't. And when I wouldn't shed my clothes and put out on-demand, he got whiny, which I found even less attractive.
He got it somewhere else, with someone else. I'm sure Sasha wasn't the first, but she was the last. I think he loved her, the fucking idiot. Brian kept failing drug tests, so he never got into the army, big surprise. He got mixed up with Wolf-man, and that got him into repo. He kept himself busy with work, and I kept busy with school."
I ran my other arm around her and placed it on her forehead, and brushed her hair back as I listened. What a history she had.
"When he first went to Florida for work, he took Sasha with him. I didn't know that right away. He told her I broke his heart. I admit I was fucked up about it, the way I ignored his advances and all; I mean, we were married, and yes, he forced himself more than once, but I couldn't be angry about that. More than anything, I mean, aside from the drugs and the general lack of motivation, you know what bothered me the most? It was the punk thing. I thought he was cool, thought he stood for something, something free, something different. Then he goes from straight anarchy to military really quick and tells me how life will be. In the blink of an eye, he was changing his whole life philosophy."
She turned to me and kissed me softly, and ran her fingers carefully around my bandages.
"I just hate men that get whiny about sex; that and men with clicky heeled shoes."
Joy opened up to me more than she ever had, and I wasn't sure what had caused this avalanche of feelings, of thoughts. It might have been seeing her perceived foe, Sasha, again. It might have been the rekindling of old memories and regrets. I had the feeling no one had ever really listened to her before, never maybe. Whatever it was, I let her go on telling her story.
It turned out that Sasha Winters, or whatever her last name was, did, in fact, love Mystic. But you know theirs is a crazy, irresponsible life. She caught him in the hot tub with a couple of well-known media-savvy debutants during a party thrown at his home. That didn't go over so well. Sasha started to drink, which led to phone calls to her ex, The Wolf-man. She never actually spoke to him but admitted to leaving several drunken messages.
Naturally, Mystic apologized for his indiscretion, the one she knew about anyway, and she fell right back into his arms. A week goes by, and her phone starts blowing up with the Wolf-man calling, leaving messages, etc. She ignored it until she couldn't. She finally told Wolf-man to kick rocks, that she was in love. While visiting a plastic surgeon for consultation, her car disappears the next day. It, of course, had been a gift from Mystic. Naturally, she thought it was the work of the Wolf-man and his goon squad. How much more wrong could she have been? So Sasha sat there asking the very person who took her car to help her get it back because she just couldn't deal with her ex; he was crazy. That fact was not lost on me. I had seen it first hand.
The one thing that stuck in my craw was why Joy was sleeping with, no, fucking; why was Joy fucking me if she was so hung up on this Bryan Blase character? I had fallen for her. It hurt and it worried me; to say anything different was an outright lie.