Chapter 11
Tony
I’ve watched Julia for years. She laughed and cried when she didn’t know we were listening.
She’s dropped us, used us, trusted us. I’ve been there when she was stiffed and when she learned her power to fight back.
I’ve watched her get herself out of situations with men who wanted to hurt her, and I’ve wanted to hurt them for her.
I know I love her. I’d do anything for her.
Julia’s known me half a day, but she trusts me enough to fall asleep in my arms.
That’s because of Caspian. She trusts him. He earned that. He told her I was all right. I hope I don’t disappoint her the way I’ve disappointed my friends.
That’s what I’m thinking about when I drift off. I dream I’m juggling three balls. I like this. I can’t juggle in real life. It’s fun.
There are crows in the sky, counting my balls. Juggling isn’t fun now. It’s scary. I toss the balls faster so the birds lose count, but one dives for me. It’s going to peck out my eyes because I didn’t juggle fast enough.
I jolt awake. My mouth tastes like battery acid. My stomach feels as though it’s being slapped against my rib cage.
Am I sideways?
I am sideways. Julia’s sleeping like an angel while I tumble off the bed, fully naked.
One foot on the floor, the boat rocks before my other foot knows which direction to step.
The world is inconsistent. The door handle is here.
No, it’s there. Darkness, myopia, and a moving room confuse my senses of space and time.
I leap for the sliding door and wrestle it open.
The boat tips in the other direction while I’m halfway through.
The door slides back and smacks against me.
We’re on the open water. Dan and Tonya must have gotten back and taken the boat out of the dock.
My stomach goes completely vertical. It’s being juggled, but it’s all three balls.
The bathroom is a blur to my left, but the door to the outside is right in front of me.
The moon is a smudge at the top of the door’s window.
It falls to the bottom, then bounces to the top and I’m thrust right toward it.
When I make it outside, I’m hit with a blast of salt air and the boom of waves. I stumble to the boat’s railing and grip it as if my life depends on it, leaning over until cold salt water splashes on my face. I puke as if it’s my job and I’m being paid by volume.
Fucking deserve it.
The boat drops. My insides twist. The puke is so prolific, it’s going to affect global sea levels.
This is what you get.
Juggling balls. Crows. A clear dream during restful sleep, interrupted.
Before the curse, insomnia was just another compulsion. Anything could happen when I slept. Staying awake was diligence I didn’t choose.
When I was a level, I was never fully awake, but I didn’t sleep or dream either. It was disorienting, and yet, perfectly clear. I catch my breath.
Guilty.
Guilty, guilty, guilty.
I’m just about breathing when I hear her.
“Tony?!” It’s Julia. She’s wearing an old T-shirt and sweatpants, walking as if she’s not upside down. She’s barely holding on. If she’s not careful, she’s going to get thrown overboard once the next wave hits. “Are you okay?”
Her hand presses against my back. It’s the one constant in the universe.
“I’m fine!” I spit into the ocean. My throat makes a quick, pre-puke hack. Another delivery’s coming.
“Oh.” She finally realizes what’s going on.
Before I can tell her to go inside and stay there, my entire body lurches and my stomach evacuates the last undigested thing I ate in 1994.
“How are you not throwing up?” I ask.
“It’s not that bad.” She shrugs and looks over the water as if she’s checking to make sure she’s got it right.
She’s not. This boat is getting tossed like a ball in the hand of a terrible juggler.
“Not that bad?”
“Do you want me to get you a towel?”
“No. I don’t…” The boat swings. She puts her hand over mine. She shouldn’t do that. She shouldn’t trust me even this much. “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’ve done.”
“I mean…I kinda do.” She puts her free elbow on the railing and lets her hand hang over the side. It’s such a casual gesture in the middle of this storm.
“It’s all my fault. The guys. They’re in that box because of me.”
My stomach can’t handle the truth. It tries to come up my esophagus, but fails and sends me a quart and a half of pure bile as a fuck you.
Julia puts her hand on my back again. She rubs it silently while I retch like a wretch.
“You don’t believe me,” I say between hurls. “That it’s my fault.”
“You can lay curses on people?”
She’s a dark blur in the darkness. I can’t see her expression. Maybe that’s why I feel comfortable talking.
“I can hide the books. I can short tribute. I was the one who wanted to stop paying. It was me who convinced them we were too small for the Montefiores to bother with. I told them they could trust me to do it right.”
I have more to say, but my stomach needs to abuse my throat more than I need to talk. The bile can be measured with a teaspoon, but the power of the thrusts could send rockets to space.
Julia stays with me and rubs between my shoulders as if I’m worth it. She deserves someone better. Well, tonight she has me instead. So she’ll get all the truth I can get out between heaves.
“I felt like a big man. Making decisions like Giancarlo. Being charming like Caspian. And then when the crows came, I put up a fight. They were crows, and they turned into men. That shoulda been a clue to shut the fuck up. But I couldn’t just let it go.
I had to refuse the tribute. I had to say it wasn’t fair, like a fucking crow-man would care.
They were my books. And they knew. I shoulda just handed over the cash.
But I wanted to be like Lorenzo and fight. ”
My breath comes at a normal pace. My gut still twists, but it’s not as insistent. I push against the railing. The sea is calmer now. Or maybe this is Julia’s Bay of Not-So-Bad.
“It’s my fault we’re cursed.” I lean against the railing next to her. “I had to be a big fucking asshole.”
“You’re not an asshole.”
I am an asshole, but I don’t have Caspian’s salesmanship. She’s going to believe what she’s going to believe.
“You’re so nice to me,” I say. “I don’t know why.”
“You came highly recommended.”
I take her hand and hold it, waiting for the message from my stomach that it’s time to lean over the railing again. It’s gone quiet in there.
“You were doing a job in Woodland Hills,” I say.
“I’ve only done one job there.” I can’t see her face, but her voice tells me enough about her expression.
“That guy…” I shake my head, remembering how we were all on the kitchen counter when the client’s son bent her over it and tried to take what she didn’t offer.
“When he put his hands on you, I could feel all of us wanted to jump out and kill him. Then you grabbed Lorenzo and all I could think was, damn that guy is dead. I knew… just knew he wanted his claw side buried in that man’s skull.
Once Lorenzo gets going, he loses control.
Giancarlo’s the only one who can keep him from tearing a guy apart. ”
“Yeah, well, I had it under control.”
“He thought you were some little mouse. He learned a lesson that day.”
“I missed him on purpose, you know.”
I tilt my head, trying to understand the blur her face makes. “I did not know that.”
“Women tend to go to prison for killing their attackers.”
“Yeah.” I kiss her hand, which is no consolation for the truth. If Lorenzo’s claw end had gone into that guy’s skull, Julia would almost certainly be behind bars.
“If he’d come at me a second time though…” She shakes her head. “I’d be wearing an orange jumpsuit right now.”
“You’d look hot in anything.”
“Yeah, by the way?” She steps back. “You’re utterly fucking naked.”