But I do remember, in wild, granular clarity, the way she looks at me then: long blonde hair cast over one shoulder and hanging in her eyes. She’s wearing lipstick, a keen bright pink, and her eyes pierce right through me.
“How’s the shop?” I ask now, too loud, because I need to change the subject, I need to not think about her, not ever again.
“You OK?” Margot must hear the break in my voice, because she shoots me a weird look.
“Yeah. Fine. Great. You know those elephants that get caught by poachers and have their tusks sawed off?”
“Jesus, Liam.”
“Then some rich do-gooder like Ellen rescues them and builds them their own Eden out in Malibu or something.”
“Ellen rescues gorillas,” says Margot idly.
“Yeah, well, I’m like those elephants and gorillas. Just got out of hell. Now look where I am.”
“This is your Eden in Malibu?”
I give her a big, devious smile and she rolls her eyes, but doesn’t ask if I’m OK again.
I turn and look out the window. We’ve hit town and midday sun has begun to burn off the half-hearted overcast. Dilapidated old ranch houses litter the far-reaching ends of the main street out here, swaddled old folks teetering on their porches, setting into their cigarettes and glaring with disdain out over the landscape, daring something to happen.
The edges of town are all frayed like this, but the neighborhoods closer to the center are a bit nicer, cleaner. Rich people from the city move out here all the time, then get a taste of the wild and get over it quick, and move out somewhere more suburban, more accommodating. I used to hate the poorness of this place. It struck me as lazy; all these people aching to their bones for something better but never willing or able to go after it.
Now it makes me think of Dad, and Margot, all these people just doing their best, just looking after their people and making modest lives.
I look at Margot and see some of the age in her. Little lines feather the corners of her eyes, and there’s the beginning of them around her mouth too. Not for the first time, I wonder what these last three years have been like not for me, but for all the people I left behind.
“The shop?” I ask again, this time reaching over to ruffle her hair.
She bats me away, but I win a small smile. “Honestly? It’s fucking good.”
“Inking up all the convicts that come hitchhiking down from the prison?” I flick down the visor and slot open the mirror. My dark hair is long enough to start curling now, though I’ve been shaving my head for years. Felt like a change. Eyes like Margot’s, dark and deep, look back at me. There’s a meanness to them now, unlike hers. An edge. I close the visor. “I mean, us convicts, we’re not made of money, but we’ve got a lot of real estate and nothing to lose.”
“Real estate? Hardly. Look at you.” She gives my ink-crowded hands and forearms an appraising look. “You couldn’t wait?”
I shrug. “It wasn’t about waiting.”
“Fine, well, at least let me clean them up.” She grabs my left wrist—her own skin surprisingly void of ink for a tattoo artist—and looks more closely at the images I’ve accumulated there: a knife, a tree, a dewy, many-petalled flower I can’t name. “Well, they’re not that bad. Actually, this one’s pretty good. Cellmate?”
“Yeah.” I’m not going to tell her more. I told myself when I got out my life would resume, and I meant it. Prison is an ended chapter, and I’m here to pick up where I left off. “You heard from Jockey the last few years?”
Margot shoots me a look. “That didn’t take long.”
“Took three years,” I say, keeping my voice mild.
“That’s not what I mean.”
I know what she means.
After the shootout—a glorified dick-measuring contest between small-time rival Irish gangs—I got rounded up. Most of the guys got out, weren’t even there when the cops showed. But Milo, my best friend since we were kids, took a bullet in the ribs. I don’t remember much of that day, but I remember the stillness that took me over then, looking down on him, his face pale and splattered with blood.
He died later that week in the hospital. But Jockey, that arrogant, loudmouth upstart—he’s the reason the shootout happened in the first place. I haven’t seen or heard from him in three years, but I sure as hell haven’t forgotten that. He owes me a debt of time, and there’s only one way to make that shit up.
Margot says nothing. We’ve reached her place, a modest little house in an older, wide-spaced neighborhood. We decided to sell Dad’s house, our childhood home, after he passed. Neither one of us wanted to shoulder those memories, and sometimes it’s just easier to let go. Besides, Margot’s single and with the shop, she works almost constantly. I won’t be on her toes.
“Thanks for this,” I say anyway, as she turns off the ignition. “I’ll get a job, get some money in here. And be outta your hair, like that.”
“You’ve been out of my hair for three years,” she says, smiling sadly. “Stay awhile. Promise I won’t mind.”
