The next few days were strange between the two young lovers. Big Tim was buried, and Vanessa went, although she went with Susan and not Tank. He rode his roaring bike, along with the rest of the Pythons. Seeing all the members of the club in one spot was a bit of an eye-opener for Vanessa. There were well over a hundred of them. The most she had seen at one time in the bar was twenty or so. They rode in a long, slow progression through town, up a winding, dusty, two-lane highway until they got to the cemetery, a green oasis that stood out against the Utah brown and orange. A priest was there, one like Vanessa had never seen before. He wore the collar, had the robe on, but he also had a tattoo on his neck, a spider that crept out past the collar. He said a few words, though Vanessa wasn’t listening. She was looking at Tank.
He didn’t weep, though a few men did openly, which surprised the young woman. She figured these guys would bottle up their emotions, would try to be tough, but they all seemed genuinely devastated. It turned out that Big Tim had a couple of kids, two boys, one fifteen and one in college. Vanessa felt for them. She knew how hard it was to lose a parent. Their mother was there, so she took solace in the fact that they at least had her.
After the burial there was a wake back in town. The Devil Dog was too small to hold everyone, so the back door was thrown open and the wake spilled out into the lot. It wasn’t a wake as much as a party, where the bikers drank and laughed and remembered their dead friend. Vanessa had to work, so she didn’t get a chance to speak with Tank.
The next morning she went to see him. He lived in a trailer just outside town, in a small mobile home park that was at least eighty percent Python. She knocked on his door, and it took him a few moments to answer. When he saw her, he sighed.
“What?” he said.
Vanessa felt defensive. “I’m worried about you,” she said. “Maybe I shouldn’t be?”
“Yeah, you shouldn’t be. I’m a big boy, Vanessa.”
“Fine,” the young woman said, anger boiling up inside her. That anger was quickly replaced by pure rage when she heard another voice, a feminine one, from inside Tank’s trailer.
“What is it, Tank? Come to bed.”
The woman who had spoken came into view. She was wearing nothing but a pair of panties, her big breasts fake and covered in dried cum from the night before. She was blond and wore too much makeup, and her lipstick was smeared.
“What the fuck, Tank?” Vanessa said, and then, without a warning to him, and without being able to stop herself, she hauled back and hit him. She always thought if she ever struck a man it would be a slap. Maybe it was the influence Tank had had on her the last few months, but she didn’t slap Tank. She hit him. Punched him. With her fist. She curled her fingers inward and drove her fist forward, right into his nose.
The blond bimbo screamed and rushed forward, and this time Vanessa had time to think. Why the hell not? is what flashed through her mind as she punched the bimbo too. She left them then, Tank silently standing there wide eyed with blood pouring from a broken nose, the girl crying on the floor with an angry welt already growing on her eye.
4
Tank didn’t even try to call that day, and that hurt Vanessa. She sat at home and cried and called off work that evening. The next morning, or at least morning for Tank—it was just after noon—he called.
“I don’t have anything to say to you,” Vanessa said when she answered, recognizing his number on her cell screen.
“Then why did you answer?” he asked.
The young woman sighed. “What do you want?”
“Look, Big Tim…it fucked me up, all right? I was close with him. He took me under his wing when I first joined up.”
Vanessa snorted in derision. “So you fucked some slut because your fake dad died? Grow up, asshole.” And then, before he could respond, she hung up.
She worked that night, and she expected him to come in, but he didn’t. For the next week he seemed to stay away from the place, and that suited Vanessa just fine. Her anger began to fade, and she was fairly certain she didn’t need or want him in her life.
That changed on one of her off days. Her period was over a week late. She hadn’t thought about it until the day before, but since it dawned on her, it was all Vanessa could think about. She went to the local drugstore and bought a pregnancy test. When she got home, she didn’t take it right away. It sat on her kitchen counter, and she ignored it. She ate lunch; she watched TV; she worked on a book she was trying to write.
Finally, as the sky grew dark outside her windows, she couldn’t ignore it any longer. She took the box into her bathroom. Inside was a white plastic stick, and she sat on the toilet and held it between her legs. Afterward she sat it on the edge of the bathroom sink and waited. Slowly, two blue lines formed. She was pregnant.
Vanessa immediately ran out to the drugstore and bought three more tests. She took them all, one after the other. All three told her she was pregnant. She sat on her toilet and cried. She was off the next day too, and she didn’t leave her apartment. She considered calling off the next night, but she went in. She pulled Susan aside when she got there and told her everything—about Tank, about the baby. The older woman hugged her.
“It will be okay,” Susan said. “These things have a way of working out. Are you going to tell Tank?”