morning merely checking the palm fronds for movement, wind direction? What if she took a job that didn’t involve the messy creation of families, but was simply refilling tourists’ ice waters, bringing them shrimp cocktail, smiling for a fat tip that could go toward her new 5.3 sail? What if she became Waterbabe?
Standing in the raw air outside Heather’s, Chloe swallows down another surge of bile and crosses the courtyard.
45
Visitors
JASON
A knock at the door, bang-bang-bang. Nobody ever comes around except Julio, hassling them for money. Jason’s wearing the baby—when isn’t he dragging around the little backbreaker?—and Penny’s holed up in the bedroom.
“Keep him quiet!” she’d ordered, only thing she’d said to him all day.
Bang-bang-bang.
Jason zips his jacket over the baby, wide-eyed but not screaming, for now.
He opens the door a crack, and you could knock him over with a feather, but it’s Brandi, pushing the door back in on him before he can close it.
“Hey, Jay,” she says, poking around the living room like she owns the place, searching.
“Hey.” He slams the door behind her. Two thoughts: Can Penny hear her? And where’s Lisle? “What are you doing here?”
“What do you think?” She comes too close, right against him so he’s sure she can hear it breathing under the leather. She runs her little hands up the front of his thighs. “You left me wanting more. That’s no way to treat a girl. How’s Penny?”
So fast her head swivels, Jason has her by the armpit and drags her out the door. Both of them tripping over the loose strip of metal, he jerks her like a puppy on a string across the courtyard to out by the Dumpsters.
Walks right into their fucking trap.
“Hey, brother.” It’s Lisle and that motherfucker Victor leaned up against his truck. Inside Jason’s jacket, the baby digs its feet into the waistband of his jeans, pushes up. With Jason worrying that the head’s going to come poking out the top of his jacket like he sometimes likes to, the first blow catches him off balance.
Clean hit, something pops in his jaw, a sound like a lightbulb breaking, mouth filling with iron, and Jason stumbles back, tries to catch his balance before he falls right on top of it. Lisle grabs him by the arm and hisses, “That’s for fucking my girl.”
Jason rubs his jaw, two thoughts: Lisle hits harder than he remembered, and is it over? His ears ringing, he blinks twice. Might have broke his jaw, he thinks.
Crack! Victor gets him from the other side while Lisle holds him up, and his right eye goes red, blood flooding.
“That’s for shutting us out of your little deal.” Lisle twists his arms through Jason’s, threading them behind his back, exposing his stomach for a pounding.
“Wait,” Jason cries just as the baby squawks.
“What the fuck? You still got it stuffed in your jacket?”
Human shield, Jason thinks.
Except Lisle holds his arms, tight, while Brandi unzips his jacket, her ugly brown teeth smirking up at him.
“You should have had her suck it, ya know,” Lisle says. “She gives fantastic head.”
“What do you want?” Jason’s words are muddy with blood, and he has to spit, something red and hard, before he says it again. His pulse is pounding in his jaw and his eye while Brandi unties the towel, but she’s not holding on, and the baby falls straight off him. Jason’s arms jerk against Lisle’s to catch it but he’s too slow, and it falls, facedown, on the wet leaves and gravel at Jason’s feet.
“Jesus, don’t break the billion-dollar baby. Pick it up, shut it up!” Lisle snaps, and Brandi does, wrong, holding it out from her while it screams.
“Should I put it in the truck?”
“Hold it while Victor and me convince Jay to cut us in on this little thing he’s got going with Mr. and Mrs. Paul Nova,” Lisle says.
The baby’s screaming. If they were anywhere else, the sound might get someone’s attention, but here in Felony Flats, a baby sounding off means nothing. Jason could have got away, if not for Victor. If Lisle hadn’t brought backup, Jason thinks, he could’ve taken him. But then what? Run? And what about Penny? What about the kid?
Jason slumps back against his brother, who says, “Straighten up! Take it like a man, ya pussy, so I don’t feel like a shit for what Victor’s got to do.”
Jason doesn’t have it in him. A sound comes out of his mouth, like a dog’s whine. He just wants it to be over;