Page 91 of Fury

My eyes blinked and focused on a heavy set, leather-clothed man. Knobby nose, thin lips. His skeleton patch. Motormouth from Med’s club.

“What the hell?” I sputtered, crawling backward like a spider who’d been newly uncovered, scooting back from the rising tide of evil before me. My back slammed into a leg of my dining table.

“I saw you on the street. My sister lives up here so I come up when I can to hang out with her and her kids. We were at this hippy coffeeshop in Bucktown yesterday and I saw you. Something about the way you walk, swishing that tiny ass, your smirk. You were with some black haired bitch who wouldn’t shut up. I followed you here. Today, I went to that coffeeshop again, thinking maybe I’d spot you. Just to be sure it was you. And yeah, you showed up, but this time you took off your sunglasses. This time I was sure.” He lunged on top of me, his smoky breath heaving on my face.

“Get off me!”

“No, no, no. That’s not how this is going to go, Reen.”

“Motormouth! We started out together. You were just a grunt when I showed up. We put up with their shit together.”

He laughed. A dry laugh. A you-know-better-than-that laugh. My heart shriveled at the sound, my stomach curdled.

When Med had first brought me to his club, Motormouth had been a prospect, wide-eyed and eager to please. We’d struck up an easy going friendship, a friendship that Med picked up on and was suspicious of. He had forbidden us from any form of contact.

Motor released me and sat up. “Yeah, we started out together all right. You, me, and Rosie. Remember Rosie? Maybe you forgot her here in your new life.”

Rosie was Motormouth’s girlfriend. She was a pretty Asian American girl who danced for a living and enjoyed partying with the club. She was also a single mom to a young boy. Motor adored her. She was a sweetheart and we’d become good friends, my one bright spot in those years with Med.

My right hand flexed over my thigh, and the large white-blue moonstone ring I wore stared back at me. Rosie had lent it to me to wear one night out when we’d gotten all dressed up, then insisted I keep it.

“No, Motor. I haven’t forgotten Rosie. ”

His eyes hung on mine. Cloudy grey blue, pinched and worn. “She’s gone, Reen. And you did that. What do you care, huh? Now you got yourself a new friend to take her place.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You took off, and Med blamed Rosie. Said she’d helped you out seeing as how the two of you were buds.”

“She didn’t help me. I hadn’t even planned on running off. It just happened.”

“Just happened, huh? Well, that didn’t matter none to Med. Rosie was connected to you.” He nodded his head, a faraway look in those murky eyes. He was reliving it, and it was stinging him all over again. “There was a party, and he gave her away.”

“Gave her away?”

“Yeah. When we were in California, we met these bros from a new chapter up in northern New York. They ended up coming back with us to Kansas and stayed to party before heading home. Med was furious that you’d taken off. That night we were all playing a crazy game of poker, and he used her as a chip. He lost her.”

“Lost her?”

“Yeah.” His voice was seeped in misery. “With that fucking grin on his face. You know the one.”

“I know the one,” I breathed.

“He gave them my Rosie.” He brushed a hand across his mouth. “She wasn’t my old lady. Kept insisting we were good as we were ‘cause she was still planning on leaving Kansas and going to Vegas to find work. That night she didn’t get what was going on. She was high and just didn’t get it, laughing out in the parking lot as they took her with ‘em.”

“Motor—”

He gnawed on his lips. “Went out of my mind—”

“And Ricky?” Rosie’s son was five years old now.

Motor’s eyes closed for a moment. “I don’t know.”

My hand flew to my mouth. I reached out and touched his arm, and in a flash of movement he grabbed my hand, twisting hard. A streak of pain exploded in my wrist, my elbow. I gasped loudly, my body wrenching to the side, my shoulder screaming.

He hoisted me up against him, and pressed his stubbly face against the side of my cheek, sniffing deeply. “But I found you. I did.”

“Motor—”

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