38. Chapter 38
Things don’t quite go according to plan.
For starters, Lavender is never gonna win an Oscar, but I do see her in line for a Razzie. Worst supporting actor in a B-rated film
After we sort out our parts, I lay on the floor, face down, the deadly weapon held in my hand. I’m not holding the cloth itself because I figure as I roll, it will fall off and leave me free and clear to start slashing.
“Ready?” Lavender asks.
“Yeah,” I say, my voice muffled. I realize I’m holding my breath and let it out in a whoosh.
“Okay, here goes,” Lavender mutters. Then there’s quiet.
I wait. Nothing happens.
“What are you doing?”
“Rehearsing,” she says. “I gotta get the lines right and I’m trying to decide whether I should start screaming first, then pound on the door or the other way around.”
I think about it. “Do it at the same time.” My butt starts to itch. “Hurry up.”
I wait. Nothing happens. My shoulder-blades prickle.
“What are you doing now?” I growl.
“Breathing,” Lavender replies. “You know, that’s what you do to get centered before a big scene.”
The bottom of my foot twitches. “Please, Lavender. Could you just do it? I’m not the actress you are. I can’t sustain the dead body pose too much longer.”
It’s a white lie, God. The part about her being a better actress than me.
God is silent. It’s his way of disagreeing.
To my relief, Lavender starts knocking on the door.
“Louder,” I say tersely.
“I’m working up to the crescendo. Otherwise the panic will sound rehearsed,” she hisses. “Now shut up and act dead.”
I shut up and act dead.
Lavender starts knocking again. “Hey,” she shouts. “Hey, somebody I need help here.” She starts banging on the door with the palm of her hand. I hear her rattle the knob then pull at the door like she’s desperately trying to open it. “I need help!” she screams. “I think Mina’s dead. Please somebody!” She’s banging harder now, her voice in full panic.
I have to admit she’s got the scene down pat. A little wooden, but if I were on the other side of the door, I’d fall for it.
She doesn’t stop screaming despite her voice getting hoarse. “Please, please. She’s my best friend.” She sounds like she’s weeping and tears burn my eyes.
Such emotion, such conviction.
“Please, help me.” Her voice trails off into a high whine. “Please. Please.”
“Someone’s coming,” she whispers to me.
A few seconds later, the door bangs open. “What the fuck is going on?” It’s Henchman.
“Thank God,” Lavender says, her voice trembling. “Mina was up and talking to me, then she just collapsed. Her face got all pale and her eyes rolled back in her head, she stumbled back a few feet, then boom! She was down.”
Okay, that was overacting, but we didn’t rehearse what she needed to say after the baddie came into the room. I feel like a director who’s screwed up the scene.
“Stay where you are,” says Henchman. The door slams. I hear his footsteps, then smell the stench of bad-guy maleness as he crouches down beside me. I crack my eyes slightly, then groan as he rolls me over.
He takes my wrist, feels for a pulse, then the idiot leans over me and puts an ear to my mouth to check if I’m breathing.
My heart leaps. He’s vulnerable. This is my chance. I tighten my grip around the deadly weapon, raise my hand and start to swing. The cloth, which was supposed to drop, snags on one of the jagged edges. I shake it, trying to get it loose, but it won’t fall off.
“Dammit,” I mutter, then pop my eyes open and see him looking into my face. He starts to rise, I swing the deadly weapon, the cloth flaps in the air and hits him in the side of the head.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Henchman is clearly not the brightness light bulb in the box if he has to ask that question.
I swing again, the cloth hits him again. He flinches. I shake the deadly weapon, the cloth still won’t come loose.
“Where the hell are you, Lavender!” By now she should have had time to pick up the table leg.
Henchman starts to rise just as the cloth shakes loose. I swing again. Miss him because he’s in motion. Swing again. This time I get a good hit on his arm.
“You bitch!” he shouts as he curls his hand into a fist. Same arm as the injury so I realize I’ve inflicted minimal damage.
“Lavender!” I shout as I swing again and manage to hit the knuckles of his fist. What’s left of the glass splinters. I close my eyes as shards fly around.
“Comin’,” Lavender says like she’s catching a bus. Then swack!
Henchman’s eyes widen and he turns towards Lavender, who gives him another swack, the blow landing on the side of his face. “You fucking bitch,” he screams as he turns his back to me.
“Stab him!” I scream at Lavender.
“I’m trying!” Lavender says.
Push him into the sharp part, Ximina, mom says.
Fuck that, Reaper says. Grab his balls and squeeze them like you’re making Limoncello.
Yes!
I slip my hands between his legs, grab his balls, curl my fingers around them, and squeeze like a nutcracker.
“Arraghhhhhh!” he screams as he tries to roll away.
Lavender is flailing at him with the table leg, trying to hit his head and missing. “He won’t hold still,” she cries as she takes another swing and almost catches me.
“Of course he won’t!” I yell as I duck. “I’m squeezing his balls.”
“Let go and I’ll hit him there.”
“Don’t,” Henchman begs as he jerks out of my hold. “Please don’t.”
Apparently begging doesn’t work on Lavender as she arcs the table leg and with unerring accuracy and catches him at the apex of his thighs.
I’m climbing to my knees as the door bangs open. “What the fuck is going on?”
Bloody hell! In all the commotion, we forgot about Chromedome. He’s holding a gun in his hand, which he aims at Lavender. “You stupid bitches.” He glances at Henchman, who’s curled up like he’s back in his mother’s womb, holding his tiny little penis and cupping his even tinier balls, moaning and crying.
“I’m gonna kill you,” Chromedome snarls like he’s psychic, but then a miracle happens.
Spot comes thundering into the room, hurls himself in the air, hip checks Chromedome as he flies by him and full-body tackles me, knocking me flat on my back. He starts licking my face and pawing at me.
“Get off!” I yell as I push at him ineffectively. I’m a little over 120 by about 12 pounds and he’s 60 pounds, so in dog years, that means he weighs 420 pounds.
Then there’s a loud bang. Could only be a gun. I don’t feel any holes and Spot is still licking me, so Lavender is the only one left.
“No!” I scream as something heavy falls on Spot, then as Spot yelps and scrambles out of the way, slams into me. “Lavender!” I scream. “Oh my God, Lavender. I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
“For what?” Lavender says as her face swims into my vision.
“You’re alive?” I’m shaking so bad I can barely get the words out.
“Of course I’m alive. Spot hip-checked the baddie trying to get to you, which made him loosen his grip on the gun, so I grabbed it and shot him,” she says so matter-of-factly, I thank God she’s my friend.
Ex.
Not anymore.
Chromedome is groaning and holding his shoulder and I realize he’s bleeding onto my hair and face and shirt. “Get him off me!” I say as I shove at him.
“On it,” Lavender says as she pushes at him. He’s heavy so it takes a couple of tries, but then she rolls him off, practically landing him on Henchman.
She grabs my hand and hauls me to my feet. “I shot him in the shoulder because I didn’t want to kill him.”
“You could have missed,” I say as my breathing starts to normalize. “You’re supposed to shoot him in the torso.”
“I never miss,” Lavender says as she tucks the gun into the back of her pants.
She’s right. She’s the reigning champion at beer pong. It’s partly why I rarely drink; I’ve got a competitive streak and the few times I’ve taken her on were disastrous.
Spot slides out from under the desk and whines as he lopes up to me.
“You idiot,” I say as I give him a hug. “But thank you, I guess.”
“We better get out of here,” Lavender tells us.
I hesitate. I don’t really want to go near the assholes again, but I also don’t want them to be able to call for help. “Cover me,” I tell Lavender. “I wanna get their phone and any other weapons they have.”
Lavender picks up the table leg and I sigh. “Use the gun.”
“Right,” she replies as she drops the leg and pulls the gun. “Don’t you bastards move!” She’s pointing the gun like she’s one of Charlie’s Angels. I decide that she’s sexy enough to pull it off.
I grab their cell phones and another gun. Spot follows me around, snuffling into their faces. Chromedome swats at him and he leaps back.
“That’s got it,” I say as I straighten up. “Let’s go.”
We slam the door on our attackers and slip the outside bolt into place. “Who puts one of those on the outside of office doors anyway?” Lavender asks.
“Bad guys,” I reply. “That’s who.”
No one stops us as we run toward the door, Spot leading, then Lavender, then me.
The air outside is the best thing I’ve smelled since Reaper in the storeroom. I breathe it in, then start giggling. It turns into full-out belly laughs that I can’t control.
Then Lavender joins in. We’re rocking against each other, howling, then dropping to our knees, hugging each other. It lasts maybe a minute or two, then I pull my emotions back inside, wipe my eyes and stand.
“Okay, what’s next?” Lavender says, breathing hard as she climbs to her feet.
I look around. The warehouse is in an industrial section in Reno. I know it’s in Reno because we were in Reno when we got T-boned. “We gotta get rid of the guns.”
“Shouldn’t we bring them along for protection?”
I shake my head. “If we get stopped by cops, we’ll get arrested. And the phones are no good to us since they’re locked.”
We look around again. “We’ll hide them somewhere,” I say. “Even if the cops find them, they can’t trace them back to us.”
Lavender carefully wipes the prints off her gun with the bottom part of her shirt, spies an empty barrel and chucks the gun into it. From ten freaking yards away.
Reigning beer pong champion strikes again.
I hand her my gun. Two for two.
“Let’s see if you can do four in a row.” I hand her the cell phones.
She chucks them in and dusts off her hands. “Now what?” she says with a smug grin.
The girl’s definitely got talent. “Got any money?”
She digs into her pocket and produces a $20.
“Really?” I say in disbelief.
She shrugs. “In case of emergencies. What’re we gonna do?”
“Grab a bus.” We both look at Spot.
“We could say he’s a seeing eye dog,” Lavender ventures.
I twist my lips. “I don’t know. It’s not really politically correct.”
“It’s an emergency.”
She’s right.
As we walk out of the industrial area towards a main road, my legs remind me of all the exercise they’ve been doing. At this rate, I’m going to have start eating four or five calzones for breakfast to keep my strength up. Maybe more. After all, there’s been a lot of extracurricular activities happening too.
I think of Reaper and choke on a sob.
He’s okay, Bella, mom says. You can’t control it so concentrate on yourself. Get safe first.
She’s right. “There’s a bus stop.” I point.
“Where are we gonna go?” Lavender asks.
It doesn’t take me long to decide. “To Hook’s.”
She wrinkles her forehead. “The strip joint? Why?”
“Because it’s owned by Hell’s Jury. Reaper runs it.”
She stops and stares at me. “Are you kidding me?”
Right. She doesn’t know what Reaper does for a living. “My boyfriend belongs to the club. That’s why he’s called Reaper.”
She shudders. “What have you got yourself into?”
“Reaper’s a great guy. Normal, you know? The only one that I’m not sure of is his president. He’s grouchy.” I think about the chairs strewn all over the lawn. “Maybe volatile.”
“Single?” Lavender asks with interest.
“It’s complicated,” I tell her as I think of Verity.
“I can handle complicated,” Lavender says.
I roll my eyes. “You can’t even handle deciding what to eat at Sunday brunch.”
“That’s not fair. There’s too many choices.”
The driver of the first bus won’t let us on, but not because of Spot. “You’re covered in blood,” he says as he points at me.
I look down. It appears he’s right.
“Nosebleed,” Lavender replies.
“Call an ambulance,” he says as he slams the doors and pulls away from the curb.
“What an ass! Mad with power,” Lavender exclaims as we watch the bus disappear. “The blood is only on the right side of your hair and face and a little bit on your shirt. Geez.”
“Yeah, not exactly how a nosebleed plays out is it?” We’re start walking in the direction of Hook’s. “Maybe we could stop somewhere to clean me up.”
“Yeah,” Lavender agrees. “We’ll rent a room in a dumpy hotel so you can take a shower.”
“With what?” I sound cranky, but honestly, what is wrong with her?
“With my twenty dollars,” Lavender says with as much irritation as I’m feeling. “We’ll rent it for an hour. You take a shower, then we call your boyfriend.”
“I don’t know his number.” I make a vow then and there to memorize all the numbers in my phone’s contact list. And Reaper’s too because he isn’t in my contact list. Yet.
Lavender taps her lips like she’s thinking. “Doesn’t matter. You get cleaned up, then we can grab a bus or call a cab.”
“If we use all the money on a room, which we won’t get for twenty dollars anyway, then we have none left to take the bus. What are we gonna do then. Roll a drunk?”
She actually thinks about it, then, “No. Probably shouldn’t do that.”
“You think?”
“You asked. And I don’t hear you coming up with any ideas.”
Fair point. “Why don’t we find a sleazy bar with a sleazy bathroom. I’ll go inside and clean myself up.”
I wait while Lavender thinks again. She really is a slow thinker. Finally, she nods. “That’ll probably work.”
It takes about thirty minutes to find a rundown bar that suits our purposes. Lavender stays outside with Spot while I slink inside with my head down. The bar isn’t overcrowded and as I far as I can see, there are no women. Dead silence follows me as I weave around the tables.
“Gotta pee,” I say without looking up.
The women’s bathroom is surprisingly clean, not like in the movies at all. I feel guilty at messing up the sink as I scrub my face and hair of the blood. I take my shirt off, highly conscious that I’m not wearing a bra, hoping that no one decides to check on me. It’s hopeless anyway. It doesn’t matter how hard I scrub the fabric, there’s no fixing the blood on it.
And now it’s wet. The water’s made it sheer and I think of how Reaper might appreciate how it clings to my breasts. Then I think of how Reaper might not appreciate how others might see how it clings to my breasts.
Still, it is what it is and frankly, the wet shirt look will probably distract everyone from noticing the blood on it. I give my boobs a little lift, then look at myself from several angles. Nice, Ximina. Nice. As I reach for the handle on the bathroom door, I hesitate.
Sorry God. Sorry Pops. Especially sorry Reaper.
Forget about them, Mom says. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
She’s right. I pull my shoulders up, slap a smile on my face and walk into the bar. The men aren’t seeing me or the blood, they’re looking at my chest. Head held high, I strut out of the bar and back onto the streets of Reno.