Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One) (35 page)

M
y
pops.

And
I’m OK with that.

I slap his back a few times. He slaps mine.
He won’t let me go.

I hear steps out in the hallway. Then a
sound like
stomp stomp stomp
.

And a memory
:
Gulp gulp gulp.

Slap slap slap.

Great, Catalina’s back. Only she would stomp
in a hissy fit like that.

Then, muffled, but getting closer: “JOO
FUCKIN
— I GONNA— HOW
DARE YOU—“

And that’s when the door slams open.

Catalina stands there like something out
of a wild western flick. Black Beretta Nano sitting snuggly in her
hands. Relaxed and poised. As if she’s fired a hundred thousand
rounds with it in her life.

And it’s aimed at us.

Fury and rage
burn in her eyes. “JOO FUCKIN MOTHERFUCKER, I
GONNA KILL YOU YOU FUCKIN—”

She doesn’t kill me.

Although
she tries to.

But she does kill someone else.

Blaze Ryleigh

By the time they get him off me, I think
Xavier’s hit me already.

The tiny iota of time which passed is an
eternal stillness in my head: My knees hitting the ground after
being yanked off the
Swallow Café’s
bench. The scuff on the toe of his brown Giorgio Brutini
Oxfords. A crumb underneath that. The instant reaction of my elbow
to above my head. And his insane scream in my ear:
“
Joo
fuckin
puta
!”

All followed by a clash and crash and
tumble of shoes and pants and denims over my head (one stray foot
actually kicked me in the top lip) while men in the café flew
toward him to get him off of me.

And then
the sounds of Xavier fighting off the four men now
on top of him, despite his smallness.

I turn my head and see them in a corner.
Four above him, trying to hold him down. Xavier is a caged animal,
a tangled mass of unreasoned fury, fueled by the cocaine pumping
through his heart. Even now, after a century of time has elapsed in
my mind, I’m still struggling to piece together what’s happened. In
reality, only a few seconds have passed.

But a few seconds is enough.

Enough for me to realize that this
motherfucker just tried to lay a drug infested hand on his dead
sister’s best friend, the very girl he
fucked
and declared his love for once!

Me
.

And that pisses me off.

That pisses me off big time.

A whole new chemical rolls in and through
my veins. Pumped out by my adrenals. My heart thumps in my ears. My
fists tighten. My arms steel up.

I stand.

I look at Xavier, arms flailing and
kicking. Never giving up.

“
Leave him!” I scream. The bearded and
dreadlocked dudes on him don’t let go. “LEAVE HIM!”

They stop moving. The blond
one looks back at me. Then at
his black-haired friend.

I grab a mug from the table. “Leave.
Him.”

They do, finally. Slowly. Confused. Xavier
has a little blood dripping from his lip. Not much. Barely a
scrape.

He spits out. “
Joo
fuckin assholes! I know who you are! I gonna
kill—”

“
Xavier!”

I hear various calls to nine-one-one from
behind me.

He grins when he sees me holding the mug.
“Whatchoo gonna do baby, commit Murder One with a fuckin coffee
mug?” He laughs, proudly, smugly.

Haughtily.

I say:
“Damn fucking straight I am.”

The great thing about Coke, is it makes
you feel invincible. So invincible, that you think you can dodge a
screaming bullet aimed for your head.

Or a mug.

It crashes against his right temple and
shatters. A beautiful cut rips open on his
temple and sweet blood trickles down his
face like juicy molasses, onto his pink
Pierre Cardin
shirt.

He hits the floor with a thud.

As I look down at him, I think of stabbing
him with the shard of the handle still firmly clasped in my
hand.

And soon the four guys who were holding
him back, are now holding me back.

Seeing him lying there, blood crowning his
brow, I think of his sister. My best friend.

The light in both our lives.

All said, he disappoints me. That’s all. I
don’t hate him. I don’t feel anything for him. He is who he is. And
the drugs make him someone else.

The men let me go.

I turn.

I hear some gurgles from him, a chair falling
as he tries to get himself up. I don’t care. I don’t care!

I leave. I chuck the
mug handle on the street.

I’m walking away from him, from the gig. From
all of it.

I’m pretty sure I won’t be gigging
at
Sacrament
next
weekend.

I wouldn’t want to either. Because I’m done
selling my soul.

I’d rather be broke
than a sellout.

Outside, in the bright light, I feel
different than how I did just before seeing Xavier today. I feel
free. I think of my music. I think of the beats in my
head.

Most of all, I think of Deck. Of us
sharing a glass of wine up in my soon-to-be ex-loft. Of us sharing
a kiss.

Of sharing more than that.

I’m ready for it. With him.

It brings a warm smile to my face, thinking
about it.

And I don’t care about anything else. Because
he makes me happy. And that’s all that matters.

Set to a backdrop of approaching NYPD sirens,
I head on over to my apartment.

And I call him.

Declan Cox

Pops turns, puts his hands up. “Catalina,
what da fuck you doin?”

“
Shut up, Raymond. Get da fuck out da
way!”

“
Cat, chill—”

“
Joo
fuckin chill! Dis punk! He almost kill you
tree
years ago, and you let him come
in here? And he have no respect for me either!”

“
Cat—”

She shakes the gun, just to remind us
she’s wielding it. “Shut up! Raymond, get da fuck out da way! I
gonna kill him. I gonna kill—”

“
Cat—”

“
SHUUUUUT UP!!”

Silence. A car revs outside. I start
moving out from behind my pops. He pushes me back behind
him.

“
Let him come out! Let the little
puto
come out. I shoulda killed
you
tree
years ago
you mudderfucker! She was dead already! He needed companionship!
What kind of child strikes his own father!?”

I try calm her down.
“Catalina—”

“
JOO SHUDDUP!
” The word is stretched:
SHUDUUUUUUUUUUUUP!

Then an idea strikes her
—it’s evident. There’s a perceptible glow
on her face. She looks at Trev. Smiles.

Suddenly, she flicks the gun over
in
his direction, on my
left.

She grins. Cocks her head a little to the
right. Her muscles seem to ease off. “Oh, da fuckin poetry,
esseh
.”

She eases her left hand up and over the
slide of the gun. Racks it back with a ratcheting click.
Cocked and
ready
. And starts
squeezing down on the trigger...

“
Cat. What da fuck you doin’,
baby?”

She’s grinning widely now.

“
Da little punk need to be taught a lesson,
Raymond. But if he dead. He dead. Nada. No suffering.
Nuttin
. He hurt
you, honey. So I gonna blow his friend’s head off here. Teach dis
little punk a lesson about suffering. Because you suffered Raymond.
You suffered, honey! Because of this puto! He need to suffer as
well!”

“
Cat, he didn’t hurt me
nuttin
, sweetie. C’mon. Don’t do this! What da fuck has
gotten into you!?”

She sniffs loudly. Twice. And a light
trickle of blood creeps down her right nostril.

La
Cocaína.

Oh. Shit.

Pops
anticipated the trigger-pull.

I didn’t.

He dove.

And when blood splattered from his head
onto Trev’s face, I thought they’d both died.

Alas, only one of them did.
“Before he hit the ground,
son,” they would tell me later.

In an eternally lasting moment, I stare at
my father’s half-head on the ground. Commotion follows. More
gunshots. Smoke. Some shouting—Trev’s voice. I recognize that. Yes,
it’s Trev’s voice.

Pops?

A woman screaming. Foul and wild
and—

Boom.

Another shot. I don’t know how many I
count.

Then a click.
No more bullets.

Eventually, the gore on the ground is
undeniable. The brains on the wall, unmistakable. Spatters of blood
on my sweater leaving no doubt.

None whatsoever. Finality.
No going
back
.

As I stare at it. As I look at it.
At
him
. A sadness
so large, so heavy, so colossal in its weight, and yet so brittle,
hits me. I don’t fall to my knees so much as the world climbs up to
reach them. And then it topples over, causing my head to hit my
father’s bloody chest.

I don’t scream. I do something else. I cry
to god himself. Up there, somewhere.
Or nowhere.
“WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU, YOU MOTHERFUCKER! WHY!
WHY!!!! WHY BOTH OF THEM! WHY BOTH MY PARENTS!”

I call him back. I call pops. I urge him
to wake up. I tell him I’m sorry. I tell him I didn’t mean it. In
the distance—another country as far as I’m concerned—the bitch
screams. Wailing tears of realization for what she’s done. I shake
him, watch his bloody head ooze out the same liquid which pumps
through my own veins. An eye missing. A hole where there should be
flesh. My hand trembles over what’s left of him.

Soon, there’s nothing left to do, but
shake.

And cry.

And think of death.

And hope my head doesn’t explode with rage
and sadness and fear and everything bad and horrible a person can
think of, all concentrated and magnified an eternal number of
times.

Afterwards, there’s not even that.

There’s just nothing. An emptiness. A
hole. A chasm. A
not there
.

And a deafening silence in my
head.

Gloved hands reach out to move me. Like a
belligerent child, I fight them off.
I must be here with him
. Then there are Trev’s hands, gentle and
firm.

And I leave my pops.

Forever.

It ain’t no throwing-the-ball-in-the-park
kinda relationship. Never was. Never will be.

In the car, the silence continues. A
silence composed of loudness. So many clashing thoughts in my mind
that I can’t hear a thing. But I can feel something. A buzz. On my
leg. Like an incessant wasp digging into my skin.
My phone’s
ringing.

I pull out the phone, and look at the
screen.

I don’t answer it.
Blaze.

But I ask Trev to drop me off at
her place.

It’s Karma, son. That’s prob’ly
the only thing I believe in now.
’
Cause it makes sense.

I say nothing when she answers her door.

Trev stands behind me.

“
B—Blaze, Deck—Deck’s father
was...murdered...about an hour ago. While saving my
life.”

Her hand flies to her open mouth. Tears well
up in her eyes. As they do in mine.

I’ll share this with
her
, I think.
Because I won’t
survive it alone
.
I can’t survive
this alone.

She opens her arms to me.

And I crumble into them.

I make Trev stay awhile, because I don’t
want him to be alone either. He calls Skate. Then he explains to
Blaze, in hushed tones, what happened, that the woman shot my
father, that there was a brief moment of incredulity in her after
it happened. That that’s when Trev went for her, and got her—or
else she would’ve shot me after as well.

I sit by the window, staring at the setting
sun. Darkness engulfs Brooklyn like a widow’s veil.

Skate arrives, and he and Trev go out “to
get drunk. In the old man’s memory.”

I nod my head at them, but say nothing. I’m
out of words. I’m out of tears.

I’m out of everything.

When they leave, Blaze kneels beside me.
Grabs my hand. Kisses it softly. Then again.