15. Ryker
15
RYKER
T hat’s really not how this was supposed to go.
I mean, I didn’t plan any of this. I couldn’t have known how this would go, but it should definitely not go like this. Now she’s making friends with my friend and whispering, well, not so much behind my back, but rather right in front of me. On top of that, his hand is resting on her shoulder, where it has absolutely no business of being. She’s probably cold by now, too, and while I do want her to suffer, hypothermia is probably not the way to go.
I take off my jacket and in one swift motion remove Ben’s arm, replacing it with the thick fabric of my coat. At the same time, I push her to the side to make some room for (Jesus and) myself in-between the two. That should keep her from getting sick.
Ben looks at me and grins. I know what he’s thinking, but that’s only because he’s a bit of a fool when it comes to things like this. He’s a dreamer, a romantic, someone who’s living in his fantasies half the time. Which, I’m sure has its advantages, but he’s wrong about this.
“Anyway,” I address my friend, “don’t you have some other maidens to rescue or at least some trash to bag?” I take the little foam arrow that I caught earlier and poke it against his chest.
“Alright,” he says, “I can take a hint.”
“Not a hint if I say it without beating around the bush.”
He laughs and goes in for another hug, and I can practically feel how he’s winking at Sienna.
“Now beat it,” I tell him and send him on his way.
He nods at both of us and displays the infamous Ben-smile. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Sienna. And you, Mr. Kiss, I’ll see you next Saturday, right?”
I nod as well and then steer us in the opposite direction towards the little pier in the pond, where a lot of trash tends to accumulate in the water around the wooden pillars. Then I look back at my friend, who is still smiling and giving me a thumbs up.
It’s not like I am jealous of Sienna flirting with other people. She can flirt with whomever she wants. Obviously. But we are here for a reason and that reason is not charismatic men, or annoyingly brilliant smiles, or having a good time. Besides, she is on the clock right now and I need to figure out a way for this to be torture for her. I have an objective after all.
Sienna wiggles her arms through the sleeves of my jacket and continues to detect cigarette butts like a nicotine addicted bloodhound. A few minutes later, she’s engaged in a grabber-sword-duel with a medieval knight. It’s actually sort of cute. When we got here, she was a little perplexed, but now she fits right in.
A squeal lets me know she has found another piece of garbage next to a tree stump. I observe as she clumsily drops the trash twice before finally placing it in the bag. Her nose is so red by now, even Rudolph would be jealous.
“We should probably head back,” I say and reach for the grabber.
Her hand slaps mine, and her nose and brows do that scrunchy thing they do when she gets irritated. “Have we picked up all the trash yet?” she asks rhetorically, shakes her head, and hops off towards the pond.
“You’re gonna get sick,” I shout after her, “and I will not pay you when you can’t come into work.”
She shrugs and, with a smile on her face, clicks the grabber into the air in response.
Yeah, she’s definitely enjoying herself now. She’s having fun. That’s really not what I had in mind. I need to come up with a proper plan for how to handle this situation.
I watch her skip through the meadow. She really is deceptively cute. Emphasis on deceptive.
What would be the best way to get back at her?
What would she hate the most?
A poke to my chest with the grabber interrupts my thoughts. She scowls my way as she waits for me to open the bag.
That’s it!
Me!
She hates me the most.
A smile spreads over my face, which elicits another scrunched up nose from Sienna.
“Weirdo,” she mutters and quickly hops off again.
There’s absolutely nothing she would hate more than… spending a lot of time with me.
Yes, she would loath that.
I get the sudden urge to rub my fingers together while laughing like a cartoon villain.
Yes, you just wait.
I will force you to listen to me read boring business proposals out loud for hours.
I will make you sit through the dullest of dinners with me.
I might even make you ? —
Another poke to my chest puts a swift stop to my daydreams. She discards of a dirty candy wrapper, her nose still glowing.
“We’ll go to the pier and then back, alright?” I grumble more than anything in an attempt to be taken seriously. Naturally, Sienna ignores me and continues skipping through the park.
In my pocket, my phone vibrates not for the first time today. I have 13 missed calls and a few new messages from Barb.
Mr. Grayson, reminder for your phone conference at 2:30 PM.
Mr. Grayson, Mr. Cyrus and your brother have been asking for you.
Mr. Grayson, you missed your lunch meeting and the phone conference after and I can’t get a hold of Miles. Are you alright? Beginning to worry.
Mr. Grayson, I know you don’t like it when I keep calling, but please pick up.
Mr. Grayson, a sign that you’re alive would be enough too.
“Who’s that?” Sienna asks with a used condom between the prongs of her grabber. “Your secret affair? Because I should know about that if I am to fix your image.”
Alive
I answer real quick, put the phone away, and open the bag. “Classy,” I say as we both look at the condom. “Who would do something like that?”
“I don’t know.” Sienna drops it in the bag, and her big eyes shift from the condom to me. “Certainly not us,” she says and, in that moment, I can see right through her. I can see how her memory unfolds, how the runway stretches out and the planes lift off. She’s back at the airport, back in that bathroom. And so am I. For a moment, I am not only standing in front of her, I am pressed against her, pinning her against that cold wall while her fingers dig deep into my back. I can feel the pain again, a good pain, an exhilarating pain. I re-live how it feels to be inside her, how it feels to taste and touch her. And —fuck— do I crave to feel it again, to feel her. Despite the cold, I am burning up.
And then I can sense that other pain again, the one in my butt, the one from the taser, and the cut above my eye.
We both swallow hard. Sienna nods once, says something under her breath that sounds a lot like ‘Brother Tucker’, and then she walks off again. She’s not skipping anymore. Her mood has changed in an instant. She’s not merry, not happy, and for a second, I don’t know how I feel about that.
Then I remember that is the whole point of us being here. Making her pull a face like this is why I hired her in the first place.
Both of us walk onto the pier, me following behind her. At the very end, a guy in his early twenties, dressed in a yellow track suit, is squatting down while smoking and looking over the water. Sienna picks up a plastic bag that’s stuck among the reeds. When we approach, the guy gets to his feet and looks over his shoulder.
“What the fuck are you supposed to be?” he asks rather rudely.
Sienna looks down at herself. “Cinderella? Generic fairytale royalty?” Then she pokes holes into the air with her grabber. “But this would probably make me Trashinella.” She ruffles her own hair. “Litterinella? Yeah, the name needs work.”
Looks like her mood is lifting again.
“Ah,” the guy says and rolls his eyes. Then he walks back towards land and, while doing so, flicks his cigarette into the pond.
“Hey!” Sienna spins around like a hound who just discovered a littering fox. She’s fuming. Of course, the fume is just her breath that’s visible because of the cold, but it is very fitting nonetheless. “You can’t do that. What about the ducks? And the frogs!”
“Mind your own fucking business, Bitchinella,” the guy says and spits right onto the ground in front of her.
Sienna pouts. It’s barely noticeable, but I know she does.
A split second later, I make an executive decision to drop my trash bag and grab Mr. (Cigarette) Butt by his neck instead. I make him trip over my leg and force him to the ground. His head is dangling off the side of the pier while my body pins the rest onto the wooden planks. He can’t move. I lean down and whisper in his ear, “Trust me, it’s easier for you this way. Whatever she would have done to you would have been a lot worse.”
The guy is so taken by surprise he can’t utter a single word.
“Now,” I say, “see that trash floating under the pier?”
He nods with a slightly scared, slightly pained expression, so I take most of my weight off him again.
“Grab what you can and throw it in her bag.”
Reluctantly, he does as commanded, quickly grabs what he can and eventually gets back to his knees. His track suit has changed color from yellow to green-brownish. I help him back up and wait for him to place the garbage into the bag that Sienna is holding open.
“And what do we say for polluting our local park?” I ask.
He looks my way, then quickly to the ground. “Sorry.”
“And about her dress?”
The guy hesitates a second.
I take a step closer.
“It’s very pretty,” he mumbles.
That’s more like it.
I fumble in my pockets and find a $100 bill that I slap against his chest. “For your troubles and the dry cleaners,” I explain and suddenly look into surprisingly happy eyes. “Now go away.”
The guy turns around and runs off. He’s quite good at taking commands and running.
“Next Friday we’re cleaning up Duck Quack Park. You’re welcome to join,” I shout after him as his pants sag down to his knees. When I turn around, Sienna is inspecting me wearily.
“That was kind of hot,” she says, twists the plastic bag and swings it against my chest for me to catch. “You’re like the bully who bullies the bullies. The bully-bully.”
“I’m not a bully.”
“You just beat someone up because he was mean to me.” She smirks.
Despite only sporting a fancy dress shirt, I heat up again. “First of all, I didn’t beat anyone up. Secondly, I did it because he threw trash into the pond.” I swing the bag over my shoulder. It’s more than half full. “And just a little because he was rude,” I add quietly.
It’s slowly getting dark and I should probably just drop her off at home, but my gut tells me we’re not done yet. I should use the weekend to force her to spend time with me before we only get to see each other at the office where there will be other people around. People who might get the wrong idea if I lock her into my office with me.
I retrieve my phone and dial my brother Roman’s number. He picks up on the first ring and immediately asks if I can’t make it tonight. I explain that I am not calling to cancel, but instead wanted to see if it’s okay if I bring someone along. To my surprise, he almost sounds elated at the inquiry, which is usually an emotion reserved for awful food and whimsical socks.
“Who are we meeting?” Sienna asks when I hang up.
“My brother, Roman. We have dinner every Friday. You’re coming along.”
She looks at me, then at her stomach. She forewent meatloaf in favor of staring at me angrily. “First of all, it’s Saturday. Second of all, I am kind of surprised you have two brothers. Not a twin, right? Because you seem like the kind of person who, given the chance, would absorb their sibling in utero. Thirdly, I guess I could eat.” She turns my way, then gives me a pat on my back. “I bet your brother is the one who got all the likability.”
For a moment I am glad she doesn’t ask why I am meeting him today instead of yesterday. “Yes, he is indeed very likeable, but don’t worry, I’ll try to even that out by being extra grumpy.”
“Clark,” someone shouts behind us as we’re about to exit the park. “Leaving already?”
We turn around and discover a polar bear waving at us with his grabber. I raise my hand in greeting and answer, “Yeah, sorry, Charlie. We’ve got plans, but let’s catch up next time, alright?”
“Sure thing, Clark. See you then!”
We throw the trash and grabber into the trunk and enter the car where Miles is already waiting, reading one of his smut books. He’s still wearing the trucker hat he claims counts as a costume.
Sienna buckles in and the car takes off. “Why did that guy call you Clark?” she asks eventually.
“It’s my nom de plume… nom de costume, if you will. When I first started the Litterati?—”
“Wait, you started this thing?”
“Hm,” I grumble and let my hand glide over the stubble on my face. “With my ex. I wanted to do something useful for the people in my community and the environment. You know, more than just donating money. But I didn’t want anyone to recognize me, so I came up with the costume idea. This way I can stay incognito and it’s great for publicity. A bunch of weirdos in costumes cleaning a park attracts a lot of attention, which means we attract more people, which means cleaner parks, while I can maintain my anonymity. I’m surprised you’ve never heard of us. We’re basically local celebrities.”
Sienna is quiet for a moment. I wonder what she might be thinking about, but before I can ask, she snaps out of her thoughts. “I don’t really do social media outside of work. Except for Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, and, of course, Second Chances. Though the 70-year-old divorcees and widowers are rarely ever my type.” She clumsily takes off my jacket while still buckled in and hands it back to me. “You know, that would be a valuable story. You could clean up the parks and your image.”
“Not gonna happen.”
“You enjoy being Clark too much?”
I do enjoy being Clark. Anonymity has a lot of advantages, but it’s not just that. “I don’t have to get credit for everything I do. Sometimes doing something good is pay enough.”
“How uncharacteristically noble of you.” Sienna hums with an expression of acknowledgment. “By the way, before I forget, you really shouldn’t violate rule #3. Just gets you in trouble in the long run.” She leans back in her seat and crosses her legs. “I should know.”
“Rule #3?” I ask as we slowly approach our destination.
“Never get caught. When you do something like what you did on the pier, do it secretly. Otherwise, you might get in trouble for doing the right thing… Clark.”
I’m almost a little disappointed that I am ‘Clark’ and not ‘Babe’ anymore. But also, is she implying that stealing my pants was justified? The right thing to do? She really is the worst. “Thanks for the tip,” I say, pretending to not be annoyed by her and her messed up moral compass. “What are the other rules?”
“Oh, it’s simple: Rule #1: harm no one, unless they actually deserve it. Rule #2: the punishment must fit the crime, though eyeballing is acceptable, and, well, you already know number three.”
“What would you have done to the guy on the pier?” I ask. “I know you were already plotting something.”
Sienna shrugs. “Hard to say. I probably would have tried to hide the used condom in his pocket. Or I somehow would have made him spend a day with you.” She chuckles to herself.
Yeah, you just enjoy yourself… for now. We’ll see who’s laughing when you have to listen to me sing along to my favorite ‘80s songs in the car.
“We’re here,” Miles says as he pulls the car over.