32. 1980s
This offer is final and finite.
Jason couldn’t sleep next to Billy with her dad’s voice booming in his ears.
If you want it, and Billy wants it, it’s yours.
He rolled away from Billy McClean, who was sleeping despite the jukebox and her dad’s voice echoing through the walls. Those were all sounds she lived with. She could sleep here. It would be a problem for Jason if he took Bear up on running the joint.
Not just the joint. The Demons.
I could drink myself to sleep every night.
He felt around for his pants on the floor. It wasn’t the worst way to end the day. Taking Billy to bed, then going back out to the bar to toss back a few drinks and check in with his boys. Sleep all day. Wake up with Billy. Do it all over again.
He could do this for a while.
He found his jacket on the back of a chair and put it on, then moved the cinder block Billy set in front of the door and headed down the hall to Bear and Billy’s private entrance. He could hear Bear behind the bar, the man’s last threat in Jason’s head.
If I ever see your face in my Oasis again, I’ll cut your fucking—
“Going somewhere?”
Throat—where Jason’s balls ended up at the sound.
Curly slunk from the shadows in front of the porch steps. Jason pulled the matches and pack of smokes he borrowed from Billy out of his pocket and forced his testicles back into his pants with a laugh.
“Just getting some bad air,” he said. “Bear has you on guard duty, huh?”
“He thought you might fly the coop,” Curly said.
“Thought I was allowed to leave.”
“Not without saying goodbye. That’s sneaky shit, Kid,” Curly tsked.
Kid. Only here. Kid, an insult earned from Bear for Jason’s blond hair, what the club president considered a “baby face,” and his overall lack of battle scars.
He lit a cigarette and asked, “You think I’m stupid?”
“You want me to answer?” Curly said with a phlegmy laugh and a puff of his own cigarette. “If you turn down the boss’s deal…pretty stupid, man.”
“You’d take it?”
“You bet your skinny ass I’d take it,” Curly said. “I didn’t become VP not to have a shot at being El Presidente.”
Jason hadn’t considered the other Demon in line to the throne. “You wouldn’t try to take me out to get it?”
Another phlegmy laugh. “Billy’s always been heir. That much is clear to any Demon who sets foot in this club.”
“You didn’t really answer my question.”
“I’ve always had Billy’s back, and I always will. Long after your ass is gone.”
“I thought you said I’d be stupid to turn Bear down.”
“This gig? That woman? Job security? What is there even to think about? You got a better deal somewhere else?”
Jason thought of Ohio and Theresa, who’d slapped his bill down on the table. Tell Ann I say hi. He chuckled. He must’ve really impressed her for five minutes until she found out about Ann.
“Naw, man, it’s not like that.”
“Didn’t think so. Lucky for you, Billy would probably rip another broad’s throat out,” Curly said, adjusting the back of his red bandana over the curly brown hair that earned the biker his name. “The road then?”
A few months ago, he met Curly in Vegas and rode to the ocean, then up and down the California coast. The Demon VP never strayed more than a few days’ ride from Not Your Oasis in case Bear needed Curly for club business.
Jason took a contemplative drag and shrugged.
“You wouldn’t have to give it up,” Curly said.
He scoffed. “You ever see Bear get out on his bike for more than a couple hours? You don’t run this joint without holding post.”
“You’re not taking it, then?”
“None of these guys”—he motioned to the bikes lining the porch—“none of them respect me. They won’t follow me. They’d probably take my head off for trying.”
“Not as long as I’m around.”
“You’d take my head right now if I tried to leave.”
“I’d give you a five-second head start.” Curly grinned.
“Shit.” He tossed the nub of his cigarette into the sand.
“Right now I answer to Bear. If I answered to you…” Curly shrugged. “Different story, man.”
Jason nodded. He was fucked either way, he figured.
If he left and couldn’t come back, he might spend the rest of his life trying to find a woman comparable to Billy and come up short.
Probably drink himself to death by the time he was fifty and they’d find his body dried up in some ditch, being pecked at by crows, coyotes running off with his dick and balls.
His ma would be the only one to wonder what happened to him.
Crows and coyotes. Or—
Something more violent.
He shivered. Nights in the desert were as cold and unforgiving as the Demons who locked down this corner of the Southwest.
“All right.” Jason ran his hand down the lines in his face he didn’t have that morning. “I’m going in. You don’t have to stand guard. I’m not leaving tonight.”
“She’d find you if you did. She’s a wild one.”
The way Curly said it, his grin, Jason narrowed his eyes. “You ever?”
“Ever what?”
“Billy.”
Curly’s grin spread. If he cleaned up a little, he might’ve been a decent-looking man. He curled his tongue over his left canine and flicked his cigarette butt at Jason’s feet.
“Who hasn’t?”