“None of your business.”
“I don’t give a fuck about your business, lady. Play with that body all you want. But if you need help moving that thing, I’ll help you for five bucks or a pack of Doritos. Nacho cheese only. You got either?”
“No.”
“Fine. Whatever. I don’t give a fuck.”
Without waiting for an answer, he turns away and brings his bottle to his lips. I drag Ricky into the elevator, press the button, then drag him into my room. It’s a dirty place that seems to get dirtier every time I blink my eyes. Every time I want to use the toilet, I have to fight a cockroach the size of a Pomeranian that I’ve taken to calling ‘Charlie.’ Grunting, I roll Ricky off the dolly and dump him into a pile of dust bunnies. He moans, inhales a dust bunny, then breaks into a hacking cough. I smile.
Then I kick him in the ribs. “Suffer, you piece of shit.”
It takes me thirty seconds to cuff him and tie his legs together. Smiling and whistling, I open the mini fridge, take out a beer, and flip the TV on. I find a mindless action movie — Jean-Claude van Damme has to infiltrate an underground fighting ring in Hong Kong using only his fists, wits, and his ability to do the splits — and settle in to wait.
Ricky has to be awake for what comes next.
He has to know exactly why he’s dying.
He has to feel every bit of pain that he put me through by ruining my sister’s life with the fucking poison he sells.
I want to hear the fear in his voice, the remorse, want to hear him beg for his life, just so I can look him in the eyes and tell him ‘No.’
Then I’ll take him apart, piece by piece.
Every so often, I reluctantly look away from the Muscles from Brussels to take in the sight of my sister’s murderer sprawled out and bound on the floor. He’s dirty, yes, inside and out, and he smells like he’s been on a bender for so long that the cheapwhiskey’s become a part of his essence, but beneath the dirty and the funk, he’s not bad looking. Handsome, even. Tightly muscled, bright features, eyes that still — despite the murder, despite the drug use, despite drinking himself silly — shine with something magnetic.
What a waste of a good-looking man.
During the middle of the epic last fight between Jean-Claude and an absurdly muscled guy, Ricky stirs.
“Where the hell am I?”
“Not in Hell, that’s for sure,” I say. “Bakersfield is a long way from here. But you’re in the next worst place: stuck in a room with me.”
“Why the fuck haven’t you killed me yet?”
His question pokes at something inside me, and I frown. Why the fuck is he so eager?
“Shut up. I’m watching the fucking movie.”
“Your sister’s dead because of me. You want to kill me, I want you to kill me, so why the fuck are you choosing to watch a Jean-Claude van Damme movie?”
I look over at him, annoyed. Both at his eagerness and the fact that he’s taking my attention away from the movie.
“Because you need to suffer first. You deserve it.”
“I do. So when are you going to make that happen?”
“Maybe making you wait is part of making you suffer.”
“Seems to me like you’ve lost your nerve.”
“Seems to me like you need to learn how to shut up and let someone watch a movie.”
“If you don’t want to kill me, fine, I get it. You can let me go. I won’t turn you in. I’ll just find another way to make it happen since you seem to be too chickenshit to kill the man who’s responsible for your sister’s death.”
“That isn’t it,” I say. “I just want to watch the movie.”
But as the movie ends, and I look over at my sister’s killer, one question burns through my mind.
