After Hours (InterMix)

chapter Thirteen


Kelly pulled into the drop-off area in front of my building, too encumbered by my car to park.

I��d been seething the entire ride, jacked up on anger and fear, and a sort of reckless, combustible sexual adrenaline from glimpsing that side of Kelly.

But it was so un-f*cking-fair that he could do that. That he could get the better of Marco, make some difference in my problems, just because he was strong and male and pushy. Just march in against my explicit wishes and muscle through the mess I’d been living with for almost three years with his big, stupid arms.

And I couldn’t do shit, because Marco couldn’t give a damn what anybody thought unless they were tougher than him. I could scream.

Kelly put the truck in neutral and turned to me.

I addressed the dashboard, my breath so short it hurt to talk. “How much. Do I owe you?”

“I’ll tell you after I fix it.”

“Fine.” I unbuckled my seatbelt.

My head was shaking. I wasn’t even telling it to. I stared Kelly straight in his pale, calm eyes, my own burning with anger. “You have some f*cking nerve, butting into my family’s business.”

“You asked me to come there.”

“For a lift.”

“And what, I’m supposed to just let it go, knowing the guy who messed you around is inside, thinking there’s no consequences? How’s that not my business?”

“I told you a hundred times, I didn’t want your help with that.”

He twisted in his seat and laid an arm across the back of mine. “You need my help with that.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yeah, you do. You can’t fix your issues with that shitbag, just like you can’t fix your car. But I can. So f*cking let me, why don’t you? Quit thinking you have to be the strong one all the time.”

“Don’t you dare analyze me.”

“Quit telling yourself you don’t need anybody.”

“I don’t need anybody.” People needed me. My sister, my grandma, the residents on the ward.

“Yeah,” Kelly said. “You f*cking do.”

“You really wanna talk about people and their control issues, Kel? Because we can talk about that.”

He huffed a quiet laugh from his nose, blinking up at the cab’s ceiling. I wanted to hit him, he looked so patronizing.

“Thanks for the lift,” I spat, shoving the door open. “See you at work.”

“You’re wel—”

I slammed the door on his reply. My hand shook so hard I could barely fish my keys from my purse. I stomped toward the entrance, punching the walkway with every step.

When I got up to my room, all I wanted was a beer and an early night. But first things first, I had to make sure Amber was okay. Marco had finally gotten bested by a bigger bully than himself, and on his own playground, no less. Who knew if he’d be left humbled or livid by the turn of events.

I sat on my bed and dialed, hunched over, rubbing my forehead.

Amber answered after half a ring. “Hi,” she huffed.

“Hey. I just wanted to make sure everything’s cool over there after—”

“Excuse me? How about an apology?”

My head snapped up. “For what?”

“For sending that Kelly guy after Marco, roughing him up like some thug when he didn’t do anything.”

“I didn’t ask him to do that! And Marco did do something—he shoved me into a car, if you haven’t forgotten.”

“Don’t you try that, talking all judgmental, like you didn’t start that fight. Like you’re not f*cking a married man. Which is so much worse than—”

“What? No I’m not!”

“Well you want to, I can tell.”

“No, I mean he’s not married. He just wears a ring bec— It doesn’t matter why. It’s a long story.”

Silence, for a blessed moment. Then, “It is so out of line, you letting him get all up in Marco’s face, when he’s been working so hard to be better for me and Jack. Like he doesn’t have enough shit he’s trying to work through. Like it’s even anybody’s business but ours.” When the two of them got fighting, it was the entire neighborhood’s business, whether anyone wanted to hear it or not. Marco broadcast himself on thumping speakers, be it a domestic dispute or the awful, thrashy rap-rock music blaring from his truck.

“I’ll have you know I didn’t let him get in Marco’s face. I begged him not to. But he knew how I got my black eye.”

“You just can’t resist butting in, can you?”

“I wasn’t trying— Jesus, f*cking forget it. I didn’t ask him to do that. But it’s all stuff I’d have happily said to Marco, if I had a dick and weighed twenty pounds more than him and stood a chance at getting heard. And no, I can’t not butt-in. Not if it’s about you and Jack.”

“Get your own life, Erin.” Mean words, but they came out lame and petulant, and I could tell the fire had gone out of her, too.

“You guys are my life. Get used to it.”

Some noises in the background, Marco’s voice, unintelligible words in a bored tone, which gave me permission to relax about Amber’s safety. Hell, they were probably united against me and Kelly now, all boo-hoo bonding over the night’s drama.

Amber’s muffled reply came through. “I don’t know. Check the freezer.” A pause, then, “Erin, I have to go.”

“Am I still watching Jack on Monday?”

An angry sigh, and she hung up on me.

I tossed my phone on the bed, grabbed a pillow and screamed into it.

Better.

A bit better, though I wouldn’t have minded a benzo jab. I hated these stupid, fiery Mom-feelings. How nice it’d be to just get knocked out, wake up confused but docile. A beer would have to do. I pulled a can out of my little fridge and cracked it open, found my laptop and checked the day’s news headlines, needing a diversion. After that I scrubbed my face and brushed my teeth, relieved by the routines and the normality. My surge of Mom-angst subsided as it always did—just in time for the damage to register and leave me humbled.

As the rage lifted, I had to concede my anger toward Kelly. I was pissed off at Marco for being a tyrant, and I’d transferred that hate onto Kelly, for using that same physical intimidation to accomplish what I couldn’t.

It still annoyed me that he’d brazenly ignored my demands that he not get involved, but I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t happy with the results.

I waited a half hour, until I’d showered and officially calmed down, and I texted him. Shouldn’t have blown up. Way more pissed at Marco than you. Still annoyed you butted in, but thanks for caring. E

Five minutes later, my phone rang. Kelly’s number.

“Hello?”

“I dunno how to text.”

“Oh. Well, your fingers are probably too big for it, anyway. But I shouldn’t have gone all psycho on you before.”

“I’m trained in dealing with psychos,” he said dryly, calling me on my faux pas.

“Thanks, I guess. For what you did.”

“Sorry you couldn’t have done the job yourself. The world’s shitty that way.”

I sighed, the last of my anger escaping with the breath. “I hope you appreciate how much power you enjoy, just being . . . you know.”

“A huge a*shole.”

“A built one, anyhow.”

“Not like it’s an accident. I don’t lift weights to look good, mowing the lawn with my shirt off.”

“True.” A beagle could bark all it wanted, trying to sound tough. A Doberman could send a far more credible message just standing there, silent.

And there I went, animalizing Kelly yet again.

“I’ll let you know how I manage, fixing your car.”

“Thank you, Kelly.”

“Not a problem.”

“Uh, good night. See you when I see you, I guess.”

“Night.”

I flipped my phone closed, feeling deflated. But deflated in a good way, like I’d been pumped full of something noxious, then lanced. Now I was just limp, anger all drained away. I wasn’t too worried about Amber. This was merely the latest in twenty-plus years’ worth of fights. We’d patch it up, same as we always did.

The nagging hole that had opened in my heart might not heal over quite so quickly. Like Kelly had his finger in there, wriggling it around now and then so it never quite closed up, like the tear in Amber’s couch. I didn’t want to have a crush on him, but I’d known I would, if the sex was good, if our connection offered any hint that it might extend deeper than just the physical. Both of those things had come to pass. This attachment wasn’t a surprise, but it unnerved me all the same.

I changed into my Red Wings shirt and got under the covers. The pillow I hugged as I fell asleep was cool and squishy and comforting, but it wasn’t what I wanted to cling to.

I wanted warm and hard and solid.

I wanted Kelly.

***

I was at a loose end the next day, not having my car. There was a ready list of distractions in the form of errands I’d planned to run, but now no way to run them. It made it far tougher to keep my head out of the gloom left by yesterday’s incident. I nearly pined for restraint training.

I puttered and did laundry, called my mom for the first time in months. I didn’t reach her, but I left a message saying I hoped she was doing well, that my new job was challenging but good, give me a ring some time, let me know what she was up to. She didn’t call back.

Amber didn’t call, either—not for more fighting or for a truce, but happily not for any fresh crises, either.

To my chagrin, the absent call that haunted me most was Kelly’s. Until about four in the afternoon, I had my hopes up that he’d ring to tell me my car was fixed. Maybe instead of dropping it off, he’d pick me up for dinner at the bar and we’d patch over our little spat with a bit of vigorous, no-strings screwing.

But nothing. A nothingness that echoed with his voice and breath and moans and had dirty flashbacks strobing through my head. Sexual schizophrenia.

And in the late afternoon, I did a bad thing.

I drank two beers and tipsy impulse got the better of me, and I went places on the Internet I shouldn’t have. It took a couple of hours, but I found a site with Hamtramck’s public records going back to the sixties.

I searched for James Mahoney, and I found out exactly what Kelly’s biological father had done to get put away.

Vet Earns Maximum Sentence for Assaulting Pregnant Girlfriend, the scanned headline read.

Pregnant. My insides filled with ice.

And there was his grainy photo, probably the same one Kelly had stared at on library microfiche when he’d been a teenager. James Mahoney looked sad in the picture, and tired. A lot older than twenty-six, the age cited in the article. There was a resemblance to Kelly, in the brows and jaw. Forty-five years he’d been sentenced for aggravated assault, for beating Kelly’s mom unconscious and kicking her in the stomach.

Jesus. Not even born yet and Kelly was getting waled on by a father figure.

He hadn’t known she was pregnant, the article said, and my heart broke for him. Just back from the war, probably mind-f*cked with PTSD or struggling with alcohol or uppers like so many of those guys had. And still did.

He’d screwed up, atrociously. He’d beat his girlfriend, but to then sober up from an episode or a drug high and find out he could’ve made her miscarry his own kid? Forty-five years was a long time to think about one’s mistakes. But was it long enough to wrap your head around that? And Kelly’d been carrying that shit around for over two decades, going through life with that slung over his shoulders, trudging through a world full of Marcos. It was a wonder he’d held himself back as much as he had the day before. I shut my laptop, feeling more lost than ever.

And so, in the end, I passed almost my entire waking day thinking about Kelly.

It didn’t compare to seeing him. Hearing him or touching him. I’d had it bad after those simple little words uttered in my bedroom, well before we’d even kissed. We got a little something between us, don’t we?

Now I’d spent two days banging the guy, then a week trying to fool myself into thinking that was all it’d been.

I was f*cked. Just like I’d known I probably would be. I had to make peace with the fact that I needed to just suck it up. Stay alert and remind myself continually that infatuation wasn’t the same as a romantic crush, and try to enjoy the filthy-good memories without letting my libido trick my heart into thinking there was anything more to it.

I didn’t see Kelly until work, but the second he strolled into the lounge for hand-off, a hot bolt of shame-lust crackled from my feet up through my hair, everything in between left sizzling and tender. He started chatting with another orderly, and I studied him with furtive glances, trying to believe the things I’d done with this man.

He looked so . . . He looked just as he had that first morning, and during our last few shifts, following my icy lead. Far away and untouchable. But I’d seen him come apart, tasted champagne on his lips, stroked that soft, short hair as he wallowed in a post-orgasm coma.

And now I knew things I didn’t really want to. Ugly things that cast shadows over my assumptions about him, instead of shedding light.

We didn’t speak until after lunch, when I was getting a coffee in the sign-in room and Kelly walked in. He tossed me a “Hey,” and turned his attention to the whiteboard.

I wandered over, stirring sugar into my cup. “Hey.”

He scribbled Don’s name in his duties box. “Your car’s fixed.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yup. Part was cheap. You owe me forty bucks.”

“Plus . . . ?”

He thought a second. “Plus a twelve-pack for the labor.”

“Sounds like a good deal.”

He glanced at the open door, then lowered his voice. “I can’t park it anyplace legal near your building with the tow bar on my truck, otherwise I’d just drop it off for you some morning. How about you come over for dinner tonight, and drive it home yourself? Good night for grilling, and I got hamburger patties ready to go.”

Something hot wriggled low in my belly. “That works.”

I imagined staying the night, and following Kelly in to work the next morning, our pulling up together, strolling into hand-off with a secret buzzing between us. I’d wasted my earlier chance to foster that conspiracy, but I didn’t have to waste it again.

And with the promise of another round in Kelly’s bed leaving me with the focus of a caffeinated sparrow, the rest of the day dragged on toward eternity.

I had another chance to play cards with Lee Paleckas and I could tell he was doing better. More lucid, equally glib. Any hope he felt, he hid it behind a caustic persona, but he didn’t fool me. I asked Jenny if she’d heard any updates on his plan, and she said Dr. Morris had him tentatively scheduled to graduate to an outpatient program at the end of next week. I’d miss Lee; the first patient I’d forged a real connection with. Whose stay I knew I’d made more pleasant. But that was the way of the ward. The encouraging cases were always the first to fly the coop, the lost causes forever lingering.

It felt like midnight by the time seven arrived. Kelly and I dawdled behind our coworkers after hand-off, taking our time changing.

We met in the sign-in room once everyone else had filtered out. “Ready?” he asked.

“Ready.”

We headed out to his truck. I cast paranoid glances around the lot as we climbed inside, scanning not for escaped patients, but colleagues. Which was silly. If anybody saw us, all I’d have to do was tell the truth—Kelly had fixed my broken car, and we were going to get it.

“How was Don?” I asked, buckling up.

“Not bad at all.”

“I saw you were on special obs. I didn’t know if that meant he’s still on suicide watch or not.”

“Better safe than sorry, after a break like that. But Doc Morris has been seeing him for daily one-on-ones, and they’re making progress. That and some distance from Lonnie, and his paranoia’s been way down.”

“I wouldn’t mind a bit of that myself, some days—a break from Lonnie.”

Kelly smiled as the engine came to life. “He likes you.”

“Oh, great.”

“Not like, he’s hot for you.” Kelly leaned out the window to key us through the gates. “But you got him where Jenny does, worked your feminine wiles and let him feel like he’s impressive.”

I smiled. I’d thought maybe that was the case, but he was a wily one himself. It wasn’t wise to let myself think I had him pegged, when maybe he was just blowing smoke up my ass and biding his time. But if Kelly thought I did . . .

“I like hearing his stories,” I said. “All that stuff he knows about Vietnam and Korea.”

“And I bet he likes feeling like a scholar. No way he enjoys that on the outside.”

“I hope I’m not doing him a disservice, inflating his ego.”

“Treating a man with respect can’t be a bad thing,” Kelly said, turning us onto the back road.

“No, I guess not.”

“Plus his ego’s all that man’s got left to his name. And if believing some pretty young nurse is impressed by his stories keeps him feeling human, I say keep it up. We could all stand to feel more human than we do.”

With a psychic flash, I felt that punch as my eye collided with my side mirror. Yeah, we could all stand to feel well treated.

“Lonnie’s had a hard road. Broken home, lies about his age so he can go off to ’Nam at seventeen, and a few little paranoid whispers turn into full-on screaming demons inside his skull.”

“I know. What a place to come into your illness.” I conjured James Mahoney’s grainy mug shot, and my lips twitched with a dozen un-posable questions about what I’d read.

“He tell you his platoon nicknamed him Loony?”

“No.”

“Don’t ever use that word around him. Not even if you’re just talking about Bugs Bunny. Like a trip wire in his head.”

“That can’t be good, what with all the new residents bitching about being sent off to the loony bin.”

“No, it’s not good at all.”

I sighed. “He’s not ever going to get better, is he?”

Kelly flipped his headlights on as the road snaked into the woods. “Not unless some new drug comes out that clicks for him. His voices are real loud. Way louder than any scrip can keep muffled for more than a couple days, not without turning him into a walking vegetable.”

“That’s so sad.”

“It’s a sad job, sweetheart. I know you and that new guy Lee hit it off, so focus on that. The ones you can get through to. And just remember that sadness is like rain. Keep reminding yourself it’ll pass.”

“Do you feel anything on the ward? Aside from . . . I dunno. Alert?”

“Sure, I guess. I just don’t do anything with the emotions. Like I said, it’s all just weather patterns. Keep yourself separate, like self-control’s your little house, and you can watch them pass through like storms on the other side of the windows.”

My storms didn’t always stay outdoors. Sometimes they stole inside my very body, fisted my car key and dragged it down some a*shole’s shiny red hood. “You make it sound so simple.”

He merged us onto the quiet highway, sun already dipping low. “Maybe my little house is just built sturdier than most.”

Indeed, with thick walls and good locks. But I’d peeked through the curtains, and caught little glimpses of the man who’d raised those walls. There were moments during those two days at Kelly’s place when maybe he’d even cracked the windows, and let a little of what he was feeling blow inside and stir things up.

A thought slipped past my lips, utterly unintended. “Sometimes it’s like there’s a wildfire blazing outside my little house.”

Kelly glanced at me, streetlights wiping across his stern face in orangey strokes. “Outside? Not inside?”

I let myself feel a little flash of my Mom-ness, that boiling anger that jerks like Marco could rouse when I was too worn out to keep my cool. All that hot, red hate seeping into my blood, poisoning my better judgment until my temper found an outlet and bled me clean again. “Sometimes it gets in. Other times I’m quick enough to barricade the door.”

“That’s not so bad. Plenty of people’s doors have fallen right off their hinges. They don’t even know they got a choice about letting that shit in. And I don’t mean the mentally ill. Regular old everyday hotheads and crybabies.”

“How come your house is so weatherproof? How’d you do that?”

“Growing up in my stepdad’s orbit . . . He lived in a f*cking lean-to, if we’re sticking with this dumb-ass metaphor. Everything got in, and the place was always so soaked in alcohol, every lightning strike started a f*cking fire.”

“And it sounds like it had a corrugated metal roof.”

Kelly laughed. “Yeah, I suppose it did. Anyhow. You grow up with other people’s rainstorms pissing all over you, you get eager to put up some nice thick walls.” We were quiet for a long time, then Kelly broke the silence as we entered downtown Darren.

“You think I’m cold?”

“I think you’re . . . controlled. And if you sometimes seem cold, I actually kind of envy it. It’s not a bad temperament to have, on the ward.”

“How about when it’s just you and me?” Another glance, and his eyes in the dying light cut straight to my bones.

“No, you’re not cold then. Sometimes you’re mean. You know, during the sex. But not cold.” Scalding hot.

“Good.” He shifted his gaze to the road. “I’ve been admiring your cold shoulder the past week,” he added with a smile.

Be a stubborn jerk about it or own up? I’d own up, at least partway. “I’m just trying to keep things how they were. I can’t let all that stuff that happened between us mess up how I do my job.”

“Some filthy little glance in the break room wouldn’t have hurt my ego.”

A warm tremor of pleasure rippled through me. “Sorry. I’m a girl, whether I like admitting it makes a difference or not. I have to work hard to keep all that stuff separated in my head . . . Do I seem like a wreck, to you?”

He laughed. “Hell no. You seen where I work? You’re just fine.”

Good to know . . . though it still felt like a windstorm was blowing around inside my little emotional cottage every time I let Kelly get close. The Big Bad Wolf, huffing and puffing, rattling my shutters. But at times I actually liked the chaos. It was exciting.

“Even if you are a wreck,” Kelly added, turning onto his street, “you crazy chicks are always f*cking rabid in the sack. So I’ll take my chances.”

I shook my head, miming all the annoyance and disapproval I’d have felt if he’d said that back when we first met. But I didn’t feel that anymore. I felt too much other stuff for Kelly to muster irritation, or indeed to take his provocations too seriously.

Instead I just sighed and scolded, “You shouldn’t say ‘crazy.’”

“If the diagnosis fits . . .”

“You know your chances with me always get worse, the more you talk.”

And Kelly finally shut up. For a block, anyway.