Chapter 4
STORMS
Marni slides onto a stool next to me at the bar, and as I turn toward her she’s wearing a tight bondage top and chunky boots, not her normal stilettos.
Her eyes are shining. Fuck. I hope she hasn’t taken anything, or this night will go south very fast. I try and stay away from the drug-dealing crowd—my life’s messy enough without adding that into the mix—but Marni …
well, I don’t know what she does and I don’t want to know.
“Fight’s on tonight,” she says breathlessly. “Just got word.”
Holy shit. The fights happen out in the woods, run by a guy named Marco. Lots of gambling, lots of trouble. We both love them, as does everyone else in this place because nothing exciting ever happens here.
“How did you find out?”
The deal is that word gets around but nobody tells the cops.
“Angelo.”
Okay, that’s legit. Angelo would know; he’s Marco’s runner … takes bets, organizes the fighters, leans on people.
But why would Angelo tell Marni? They don’t ban women, but they don’t exactly encourage them to come to the fights either.
“Why did he tell you?”
She winks at me. “I have my ways.”
“Please tell me you have not been doing the business with Angelo.”
Angelo’s family own a chain of Italian restaurants all over the state. I’d swear on my life that he’s got mafia connections.
“Big pot, too. Rumor is some guy’s coming down from Chicago,” Marni says, ignoring my question, which means she has been doing the business with Angelo. Fuck. She has no radar for keeping herself out of trouble.
“Yeah, that’ll never happen.”
Her mouth goes into a thin line, and I know why.
Normally, I’m her partner in crime, not Miss Gloomy, but over the last few weeks, I haven’t been able to get my head straight on my shoulders.
Like Rig was my only chance for something good in this town.
Which is stupid, because it’s clear as crystal that he wasn’t.
She runs a long purple nail down the grain of the bar. “You’ve been off ever since that thing with Rig. And that Dave guy …” She rolls her eyes. “Babe.”
I can’t tell her that I don’t really like Dave, but he’s easy and keeps me company.
Sex with him is physical contact, and I don’t have much of that.
I take a sip of my beer and gaze around Callahan’s.
Bottom of the heap, accept the life you’ve been dealt.
Maybe this is the secret of happiness. Settling.
“I wish I hadn’t encouraged you to go and talk to Rig that night,” she grumbles.
I pat her hand. “I’m fine. You know me. I get in my head sometimes.”
When you started in a better life, the memories live rent-free.
The time when you went out and bought things and it wasn’t a toss-up between that and making the rent.
Food was hot and fresh, and you exercised with a dog.
A life where men didn’t make suggestions to you all the time and were generally decent.
At the bottom of the heap, men are not decent.
“Maybe I should get a dog.”
“Hon.”
“What?”
“You can’t even take care of yourself, that’s what.”
Oh, not you, too, I don’t say. My eyes smart, and she sighs, pursing her lips as she watches the bartender wash glasses in the sink behind the bar.
“You gotta come with me, Carl. I can’t go on my own.”
Damn right, she can’t. The fights are full of rough-and-ready guys, truckers and out-of-towners, small-time drug dealers who’d think nothing of forcing sex on a woman.
Come to think of it, that’s probably why they don’t want women turning up.
Adding women into the mix would be like pouring gasoline on a fire.
I gesture at her. “Why did you dress up like that? If you go there in that, it’s just drawing attention to …”
She rolls her eyes at me. “Men with money go to the fights! Men who like to gamble. I could find myself someone who could keep me in a style to which I am unaccustomed.”
My lips curl up. Marni’s one of life’s optimists. Life is one big barrel of fun to her, the next great break just around the corner. She never gets affected by the down moments, just shrugs it off with “their loss” and moves on to the next thing. Or, more accurately, the next guy.
I take in her blonde hair shining in the lights. What choice do I have? She needs a partner in crime. “Yeah, I’ll come with you.”
She claps her hands with a little squeal. “Midnight,” she says. “Apparently,” she adds with a wink.
In Marni’s car, we shoot through the green lights on Main Street and take a track to the east, winding up into the hills as the trees close in on either side, dark branches shaking their fists at us in the March wind.
Not for the first time, I wonder about storms and Rig and whether he’s out somewhere in the elements …
whether he’s safe. I’ve spent too long watching videos of guys on rigs recently, and most of it made my hair stand on end.
I roll my eyes at myself. Give it up, Carly.
After a half hour, maybe more, the road gets steeper and the ruts get deeper, and the car lurches as the engine growls and chokes.
“Are you sure it’s up here?”
Her grin is sharklike in the dashboard lights. “Yeah. Angelo was very specific. I checked.”
She’s taken me on wild-goose chases before.
“He said the track was bad … Don’t look at me like that,” she adds.
“It’s gonna be cold standing out at this time of night. Shit, we’ve got no booze … or extra coats.”
“Will you quit worrying? I’ve got two flasks of vodka, and, sweetie, I put strawberry syrup in yours. Two extra coats in the trunk, too.”
I laugh. God love Marni and her drive and optimism. “Have I told you you’re a genius?”
“Tell that to my boss, the asshole.”
Marni works as a PA to a guy who runs a construction company and has been sleeping with him on and off for a couple of years now, probably alongside whatever she’s doing with Angelo.
“What’s he done now?”
She waves a hand. “His stuck-up wife was in with his kids. I want to tell her he’s fucking me so bad. Tell her all about what he does with me that gets him off. Ruin her fucking perfect little life.”
I hear this a lot, too. “What she say to you?”
“Oh, nothing. She just kept asking me for shit: coffee, to take the children to the bathroom. She was all over George like she has the best marriage on the planet. When she does not.”
“Sorry, honey.”
“You think I’d be used to it by now.”
We lurch around for a few more minutes, and I’m about to start talking to her about the downsides of married men, and unreliable assholes in general, when we top a rise and see lights in the distance.
“Oh yeah,” we say in unison, then dissolve into laughter.
She takes a hand off the steering wheel, high-fiving me as my heart warms. Maybe we will have a fun night tonight.
“Angelo said it’d be a way out of town. Cops are getting savvy about the usual locations. They’ve had two fights recently where the police turned up and ruined it. People were pissed, he said. Marco, too. He had to return a lot of betting money.”
“Why do we need a decent guy when we have this, right?” I say, sweeping my hand toward where we’re heading, and she snorts at me.
When we reach the top of the hill, the lights are behind a thicket of trees. Cars are parked in a line along the rutted track, so we drive farther on, finding a space at the end, climbing out and shuffling around to the trunk. I grab a coat as Marni holds up a pair of boots for me.
“For kicking any pricks,” she says, and I laugh.
Flasks of vodka in hand, we head off over the field. Officially, no alcohol is allowed at fights, but everyone brings it, and you can always find someone who’s got something stashed in their car.
When we get there, the headlights of several pickup trucks are shining on a circle of grass surrounded by a huge crowd of mostly men, talking and laughing, bottles of booze clasped loosely in their fingers.
“Oooo,” Marni squeals and rubs her hands together. “This is going to be amazing!”
The breath of the guys next to us rises up white in the air, and one or two of them turn around to study us with interest.
“Shh! Don’t attract attention over here, remember?” I say, but Marni just loops her arm through mine and squeezes my hand.
Cold seeps down my neck into my coat. This crowd is bigger than I’ve ever seen; only one or two women mixed in among the rising testosterone.
Suddenly, three guys push through the crowd and reach the edge of the circle, and the one in the middle takes off an overcoat to reveal tight shorts and a vest top and starts to dance on his feet.
A yell booms from the other side, and a large man—who looks vaguely familiar and who I’m sure I’ve seen fight before—pushes through at ninety degrees to where Marni and I are standing.
“Come on, you fucker!” he shouts, and he charges.
The two sidekicks melt away, leaving the small guy dancing on his feet as the big guy runs toward him.
He waits until he gets close, really close, and steps to one side.
But the big guy flings out an arm and catches him across the face, jerking his head back, and then reels immediately around to come back at Dancing Guy again, fists flying, feet kicking out. No holds barred.
“Decent pot tonight,” the man standing beside me rumbles.
“Yeah. That fighter came down from Chicago. For the cash, I’m guessing. Marco’s been jonesing to attract some bigger names down here,” the man on the other side of him says, taking a long swallow from his flask.
“There are some serious bets on.”
“I’m betting on the local guy.”
The other man chuckles. “Are you mad? No way he’s going to beat some guy from Chicago.”
I glance at Marni and catch her eye, and she leans in, grinning. “Told you. Big bets. Big money. I wouldn’t mind someone spiriting me away to the Windy City.”
I shake my head at her.