My heart aches at her words. It's all perfect, likely to work. I hate it. Surely she knew I would. That's why she trapped me in the car. I wonder if there is really business or did she just want to corner me against this red-hot hunk of metal?
“I want you to be there.”
Fuck. There it is, her emotional grenade. There is no escape for me this time.
“I'm not a diplomat, I'm a distributer. I think you're confusing me for Josh,” I answer from a dry throat, retreating immediately to my nicotine addiction.
She sighs, nailing me with a narrowed, brown suspicion that I wouldn't be able to see if my head were turned just a little more. I can all but read her thoughts. Why would I ever relinquish any task to Joshua, whom I might very well hate? I want to break the connection, but she looks back to the road first.
“Josh worked with me on small shit. You worked with Charlie,” she answers.
Her suspicion turns to the road, so I face her. There's no stopping it. My body declines my command to play it cool and divert attention out the window. She forces me to halt my emotional retreat. Without the momentum, I may never again be able to get away.
I've never asked for authority, never sought glory. All I've ever wanted was to figure out life for myself, to take care of me and make my own space. Slinging dope came naturally. I had a huge network of acquaintances and good time buddies, tons of connections that eventually drew together into the road I chose to take. I've never wanted to fuck anybody over, I just want to get mine.
I had just walked away from everything in my life with nothing more than my life when that fateful road brought me this damn Cadillac and two kindred spirits. They were criminals by law, but they were more than petty street-level thugs, they were people who took care of the people who took care of them. They were family. And they had some impressive connections. It was too big to resist, being part of that crew.
At length, she says, “You've got more experience.”
These are such carefully chosen words on her part, and I can tell she has thought about them very hard before letting them loose. This is when she's at her most dangerous, when she's quietly planning. That's when I know she means it.
I watch the damp air scatter ash across the dashboard.
“You worked with my brother, you're the veteran,” she says, brow furrowing.
Every time she makes this face, I feel the need to cede to her anything she wants if she'll just smile. She seems so perturbed, like she can't figure out the right words to use. Never mind the feeling of being punched in the gut by her reminder.
She says, “You always know what people are thinking.”
I'm floored. I'm the kind of guy who doesn't make a scene, who doesn't yell or scream to get noticed. I don't strut. I don't fight. I'd rather walk away from conflict than fuck with it. I observe others, figure out how to deal with them in the least resistant way. For her to lay me open like that nearly makes me drop my burning cigarette into my lap.
My defense is a natural reaction by now. Maria has always looked at me with eyes belying her age. I have seen there a curiosity with me, some heavy fascination. Before Josh, before Frederick, I was there carefully avoiding friendship with her. Still, she would come to me sometimes to talk.
“Besides, I can be diplomatic. Stop acting like I'm still a kid,” she says, the corner of her mouth hooking slightly upward in a lopsided, wolfish grin that finally drives my gaze away from her. Her point is perfectly true and part of what bothers me about the current transition in our lives.
Whatever strategy she has planned, she had me when she got me in this car. For a long moment, I feel like I've been punched in the throat. I can't speak, can hardly breathe. I watch road signs pass by without ever seeing what they say. I have to treat her like a little girl because she's much too dangerous as a woman.
“You already know I'll go,” I say, as much of an admittance of myself as of her.
She takes a turn toward a less populated avenue that pits my body over into hers. Now I know she's just driving. I scramble away and jerk the seatbelt around me.
She just stares into a blazing sunset that turns the whole interior of the car to a brilliant, deep orange. She must be divine. Her skin burns with the succulence of the dark afternoon spectrum, makes my insides ache to the point of making me sick. My hands twitch to touch her. She can't know how cruel she has been by pinning me here, because she can't understand the reasons why I run away.
Again my desire is so thick it's nauseating. Who am I kidding? She's damn well a woman, and now that Charlie's gone, I'm terrified of what she's going to do. How can she not know that she can drag us each through the mud and we would still stand for her?
She throws a sharp glance my way that anchors me to the seat by my heart strings and says, “I want Josh to be there, too.”
Fucking Josh, like powdered glass under my fingernails, like youth wasted. I think of the day he arrived on the scene, under Charlie's wing, carelessly flashing his cocky, lazy smile around. Something about his sharp eyes and calculating manner pissed me off even then. He saw the disdain in my eyes that first night as he drank liquor with the family. Somehow he knew. He never said it, but he always savored her attention.
I can't look at her. I stare out the window. Sure, it stings to share the floor with that jerk.
