Indigo: The Saving Bailey Trilogy #2 (8 page)

He finds a song he likes and turns it up, the truck rocks back and forth with music. “Madame,” he says, holding out his hand to me, “may I have this dance?”

“Do you even know how to dance?”

“I feel the music, just like you do.” He winks. “I think I can get it.”

Spencer spins me into him, spins me out, winds me up like a yo-yo. His dancing is mediocre; not at all the level of Clad’s or my own, but it’s the thing I’ve missed most about Clad being locked away.

“You always know just what I need,” I say, the song coming to an end.

“I thought with Clad being gone you probably hadn’t danced for six months straight.”

He lifts me into his arms; I lock my legs around his waist, and throw my arms around his neck. “I miss him, but you make me feel so much better,” I breathe into his neck.

“Don’t fret, little turkey, tomorrow you’ll see Lover Boy again.”

“Tomorrow.” I sigh.

“I just realized something,” Spencer says, “you came to the thrift store when you were at the end of your rope, like all our customers. If you hadn’t gotten that desperate, we wouldn’t have met, and then where would you be?”

“Not here. Not here in your arms and certainly not kissing your lips.”

“Heaven,” he says, tears welling in his russet eyes. He’s thinking about the time he almost lost me, about the time he hung himself from his fan. “You’d be in heaven.”

“I am,” I say, kissing tears as they fall from his eyes.

The sun sets, a glass sand-art bottle, layered in baby blues and pinks. The radio is playing and Spencer hums to the song as he steps in circles with me in his arms. I almost think it would be better not to see Clad. I never want to spoil what Spencer and I have now. Spoil the well and you spoil the water, spoil the water and the town’s people all die.
I don’t want our love to perish.

When I was pretty, before Papa scarred my stomach, he used to call me Mia. It was a sort of favor, for being named after Mom. What if my name had been Jane? Karen? Leslie? Any other name than Miemah… would Papa still beat me?

“Bird, I told you not to come ‘round here again!” I say, digging my brass knuckles into his body and squeezing his blood out like a cherry tomato. Missing the soft part of his belly, I slash where his wing meets his chest; he hops off my car and totters down the street, unable to fly.

I’m angry, bitter. I want to kill everything and everyone. I bet I could kill the whole world, and still I would sit in my car, the last person on Earth, completely miserable.

There’s a special place in hell reserved for people like me, people like Papa. We’ll burn together. I clap a hand to my mouth, trying to hold back the sick feeling.

Blowing chunks, I smear it with my shoe, grinding it into the floor mat.

“Damn you!” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “I can’t ever escape you!”

I’m starting to understand how Bailey feels, always running from a tormentor impossible to evade.
I keep the chase going. It ends with me.

My little bird Bailey is away today, so I take a break from bird watching and pay a visit to Trenton. We sit side by side on his couch, every part of me sweating to make love to him.

“Are we going to do it?”

“I don’t feel like it,” he says, looking away from me.

“You
always
feel like it.”

“When was the last time you showered? You smell like a blunt that’s been festering in the folds of a fat, sweaty guy’s pit.”

“I’ve been sleeping in my car,” I take a swig of Smirnoff Vodka to numb the feeling of rejection.

“So, this is fun…not.”

“Will you at least kiss me?”

“No.”

“Will you hold me?” I anticipate yet another no.

“You reek.”
He gets up and goes into his kitchen, looking for something to eat.

“I’m going to take a shower,” I say. Going into his bedroom and locking the door behind me, I flip his mattress over and push my hand under the box spring, until I feel the chain of Bailey’s locket. I bury it deep in my bra—the one place I’m sure Trenton won’t be going in today.

I walk out of his room, the mattress still turned over, I don’t give a shit if he finds out I took it. What could he do about it?
It didn’t belong to him in the first place
.

“Buh-bye,” I say, passing him as he stuffs his face with a hot pocket on his Ikea couch.

“Where you goin’?” he asks with his mouth full, pizza sauce dribbling down his chin.

“Away from here and away from you. Have fun being alone with your hand, tonight.”

My car is running dangerously close to empty; I have just enough gas to make it back to Fort Myers. It’s time to put my weaponry to use and get some cash. Downtown Fort Myers is the ghetto compared to Cape Coral; here the cops are slack, as long as you don’t kill anybody, you’re golden.

I sniff out a boy of about sixteen, with a black afro and jeans that sag past his crotch. The kind of kid most would try to stay away from. I choose him because he knows the street, knows you don’t mess with someone who wants your money and has a gun. He’s probably jumped a few in his day; think of it as the food chain: he eats plankton,
I eat him
.

“Give me your money!” I say, the gun by my thigh, where only he can see it.

“I ain’t got nothin’ worth a shot to the head,” he says, pulling out a wad of dollar bills.

“You been workin’ the corner?” I laugh, fanning the bills.

“Just take it!”

As I turn to leave, his money securely stashed in my bra, the boy catches sight of a black eagle emblem on the inside of my right wrist.

“You an Apocy?”

“Yeah bro, what you care?” I ask, slipping into my ghetto accent. You talk like a kid in Cape Coral public high school; they’ll chew you up and spit you out.

“Just wonderin’.”

I stare at him a little longer. He’s cute in an odd way, his silver teeth and thick, slurred speech. Brown eyes… just brown—no gleam or sparkle to them like Trenton’s. And skin as black as the hilt of my gun.

“Thanks for the cash,” I say, taking off.

Ten bucks
, I held a gun at that boy for ten measly bucks. I end up spending it on some Molly and more chewing gum. I sit in my car alone with my hallucinations. Trees talk and birds melt from the burning sun.

I have the distinct feeling that I’m trapped in that painting of melting clocks and a vast plain.
The persistence of memory
. It’s how I feel most the time, especially when I’m tripping. My memories are stronger than any drug. More persistent, more potent. They can take me higher than opium, shrooms, or acid.

I stick a sketch of the Apocalypse emblem in-between one of the windshield wipers before deserting my car.
That ought a keep the car-jackers away
.

I set out for the Apocalypse headquarters. It’s within spitting distance of the Allie store buildings; there’s an ongoing battle for territory that has sparked many wars between us. The Allie may have store buildings but we’ve got an entire neighborhood full of crumbling houses.

I haven’t been in months, but our hangout looks just as dilapidated, if not more, than it did the last time I was here. Poc, our Ventanna—or lookout—is outside the door pushing a cigarette into the hair of a stray tabby. Pink polka dots of skin show through where Poc has burnt past the tabby’s orange hair.

“Mia,” Poc says, putting down his cigarette and releasing the cat. “Where you been?”

“Lying low.”

“Yeah.” He nods his head. “You’ve been low.
Too low
.”

“Papa’s been extra violent lately,” I say, careful not to give away weakness.

“Don’t tell that to Allegiance,” Poc warns me.

“I won’t,” I say going into the unlit house.

“Mia! You came home!” The guys greet me all at once.

They’re sitting in a cloud of smoke in the living room, each one a different still of drugs or alcohol. Allegiance, sitting at the center of the circle, is counting a stack of bills. “Mia, we’ve been wondering where you were,” he says, patting the stack.

I don’t reply; sometimes it’s better to not say anything at all, lest Allegiance should feel in the mood to beat you.

“No matter,” Poc says, coming in with the tabby cat under his arm, “you’re here now, let’s get low.”

Poc hands me a fat blunt. He rolls them best. “We got an elbow of the real good stuff from Tan.”

“A pound? You want the whole gang to smoke up, don’t you? Forget about all our problems.”

“What problems? The Allie? Shit, Mia, you know they ain’t a threat to us,” Poc says.

“They’re a threat to us if they consider themselves one. Don’t matter they’re outnumbered and weak. Just matters they think they can take us,” Allegiance sets Poc straight. “Can we get low, now?”

“How low?” Poc bellows.

“Lower than The Titanic,” I say.

“Lower than bedrock,” hoots Terminado.

“Lower than an old lady’s tits,” guffaws Poc.

“Lower than the pits of hell,” Allegiance says, taking a puff and nodding his head.

“Our homeland!”
We howl.

“I thought we were gonna have to beat you out, Mia,” Allegiance says, his voice thick with smoke.

“You don’t trust your girl?”

“I don’t trust no one,” he says, looking around the room. “I don’t trust the damn cat. Get him out of here. Might be an Allie snitch.” He kicks the poor creature. It arches its back, raises what’s left of his hair, and hisses at us. “What I tell ya?
Snitch
.”

Poc grabs the cat by his loose skin and tosses him outside.

“I ain’t no snitch,” I say. “Who do you think I am? I’m an Apocy, damnit, you don’t just quit that shit.”

“It’s happened before,” he says, his eyes black pearls, threatening.

“The Allie’s like preschool, compared to us,” I say. “I’m no kindergarten baby, I’ve had my fair share of beatings. You think I would leave my brothers
? Mi Familia?
Not if you beat me dead.”

“I just might,” Allegiance says, “you run off like that again.”

I take a long draw off my blunt and try not to think about it. He sneers at me, his white teeth and plum colored skin in stark contrast. I hate this guy. The rest are okay, but Allegiance takes his leader position far too seriously.

“Hey, where’s Tajo?” I say, realizing that our circle is incomplete.

“Didn’t ya hear?” Poc says his voice the softest I’ve ever heard it.

“One of the Allies offed him,” Allegiance says, less sensitively. “Dumbass crossed territory.”

“So, we just gonna let the Allie do that?”

“We already did. It happened a month ago,” Poc says.

“Where’d you find him?”

“Outside their dumpster. He’d been shot three times in the back of the head.”

“Details, details, what do we care for the details?” Allegiance says, annoyed.

“Well, he’s gone now. Ain’t nothin’ we can do ‘bout it,” Terminado pitches in.

“We go to war over territory,” I say inhaling another round off my blunt, “but they kill one of our brothers and we don’t do shit? Some camaraderie we got going here.”

Allegiance jumps up at me, spitting something in his native tongue. I shrug, “Well, if it was one of you, I would have let hell break lose.”

“Look,” Terminado says, “these kinds of things happen and we don’t always blow them off, it’s not that we didn’t love our brother—
of course we did
—but we don’t need to go to war until the time is right.”

“What, Allegiance feed you that shit?” I say, pinching the end of my blunt to keep the leaves from falling into my mouth.

Terminado sits back, waiting to see if Allegiance will jump me for speaking against him.

“
Whatever,
” Allegiance huffs.

“We have a new member,” Poc says trying to change the subject.

“Do I know him?”

We have a couple hundred members in the Apocalypse already; one more seems a little extravagant.

“I think you do,” Allegiance says mischievously. “Come in, brother.”

A figure appears in the entryway. Pale skinned, the sun shining off his hair in a white peak.

“Who is it?” I ask.

The person steps into the circle. My blood runs cold, I keep my eyes on the dingy carpeted floor, but still I see his Nikes and know that it is Trenton.

“He’s an Allie!”

“I’m one of you, now,” Trenton says, the hint of a smirk on his lips.

“He’s a traitor to them, what makes you think he won’t be a traitor to us, too?”

“I’m not a traitor; they were going to kill me for no reason. So, I left them.”

“I know their handbook, Trenton, you can’t just
leave
,” I say.

“Well, I did and I’m going to help you guys out. I know things about the Allie that none of you could ever know. I’m an insider.”

“He knows their tactics, their plans, their
desires
,” Allegiance says, rubbing his hands together in demonic delight. “It’s going to rattle them when they find out we’ve got one of their Allies!”

“You fools!” I say. “They’ll change their plans and tactics once they find out he’s come to us. If anything, this makes it harder. We
did
have an idea of what they were up to, now we’ll just be in the dark
.

“They’re going to be pissed, you’re damn right about that and then they’ll really go to war. No more of this baby shit, just killing off rivals who cross territory. Oh, no, no, no, they’re going to really fucking bring it, now.”

“It’s too late, we already rolled him in,” Poc says.

I look up and see the bruising on Trenton’s face. “This is a load of shit! You’re running this gang into the ground!”

“If you’re so fucking scared of the Allie then why don’t you go join them? Maybe they’ll be as accepting of traitors as we are,” Allegiance says.

“No, they follow the damn rules. That’s what makes them a threat. They have their shit straight. We might as well off ourselves now, rather than give them the satisfaction.”

I leave my brothers with this advice, my blunt burning a hole in the floor.
I hope they all catch fire.