I can’t sleep.
5–4–3–2–1.Name them.
Lindy Girl:
Five things I see?
And four you can touch.Three you hear.Two you smell.One you are.
Lindy Girl:
I am…trying to be brave.
That counts.
I set the timer, put the phone face-down, and walk away.If I stay, I’ll give in.I tap my knife at my hip, one, two, three, like a heartbeat I can hold in my hand.I don’t look back.I remind myself control is a muscle, and that I got myself into this fucking mess.I never should've answered her message.
By minute four, not that I’m counting, I’m in the garage, my Harley growling like a dog that knows the door is about to open.By minute nine I’m on the road, wind needling the edges of my fairing, city light pouring out like spilled liquor.By minute thirteen I’m telling myself this is a good spot to turn around, except I can’t turn around because I’m meeting Sava.By minute fifteen I’m convincing myself that leaving my phone at home was a dumbass move.What if my brothers call?
Sava waits under a spray-painted billboard in a busted lot where the asphalt scabs and the chain-link sings in the wind.The ad peeling above her is for a perfume calledFaith.The real Faith is the woman who sells the same perfume from a milk crate at the base.Sitting at a plastic card table covered in fake orchids and a tea light candle guttering in a jelly jar.The air is hot tar, dust, fryer grease from the taco truck two blocks over, the dry rattle of palm fronds, the slot-machine hum bleeding out of a sad little bar with one neon letter dead.
“Morning, Cassius,” Faith says.“You come to buy the whole crate again?”
“What can I say, it’s good shit,” I tell her, and set a rubber-banded stack on the cash box.We’ve done this dance before.I tap the lid so her eyes stay on mine.“Take a break.”
Her mouth twists.“Do I need to pack up?”
“No,” I say.“Your inventory won’t move.When you get back, it’ll be like you never left, promise.”
She grabs the cash, slides herFAITHsign into the crate, and hooks her tote over her shoulder.“If Manny tries to charge me for my meal, I’m sending him your way.”
“He won’t,” I say as she crosses the empty lot, straightening a velvet pad so the bottles don’t roll.
Sava’s all smoke in leather and steel, her braid dark down her spine, eyes the part of night that doesn’t give light back.No smile.I don’t think I’ve ever seen her smile.
This is my city.The grit behind the marquees, the service corridor, the lock that only turns for people like me.Lindy is the high-end lobby across town with marble, soft light, and towels folding into fucking swans.Sava and I stand where the glamour dumps its trash.I belong here.That’s the problem.
The girl under the streetlight belongs in the sparkle, too, not in this ash-and-oil I breathe.But when I close my eyes, she’s in both places at once.A lobby that hushes when she walks through and an alley back entrance that can’t quite swallow her light.Knife tap.One, two, three.I’ll guard both versions, both women.
“You’re early,” she says.Which means she clocked the engine half a mile out and heard the way I opened the throttle.
“Target’s early,” I lie.“Window moved.”
She watches me a second, because that’s our game: who says the true thing first.“You’re tapping.”
I look down.My thumb is drumming the knife at my hip.I stop it.It starts again.
Two men in a box truck pull into the storage lot to the left of the billboard.One stays inside and one smokes behind it.These two fucks are brand new delivery men to Spider.Wrong night to start a career.
Sava ghosts left.I take right.The smoker never sees her.Sava ghosts up behind the curl of his lighter, scarf already looped in her hands.One step, a slip of silk over his face like a lover’s blindfold.The scarf’s hidden core bites with nylon wire braided inside.She drops her weight, heel hooks behind his knee, and the world goes sideways for him.The loop cinches high under his jaw; she rides him down, knees in, spine arched, forearms levering back.No thrash, no sound except the small, ugly click of the hyoid giving.When he’s slack, she eases him to the asphalt like she’s laying a coat over a puddle.
The driver clocks me in the side mirror a breath too late.I’m already there, door ripped wide, my elbow smashing his cheekbone to turn his head.Thumb breaks the sheath snap.Steel clears in a blink.He’s still deciding what to do when I’ve already decided for him.I lay the blade across the carotid, not deep, just enough to split skin, my forearm sealing his mouth so the air goes back into him instead of out.He spasms, boots drumming against the running board, then slowing.I hold him until his pulse goes from fast to far to nothing.
I wipe the bloody edge on his shirt before dropping his dead weight way less gracefully than Sava.She peels her scarf free and fades to the van.I stay a beat and take the point of my knife to the smoker’s sternum and score a quick, careless web.A black-widow charm slides from my pocket to his tongue.At the cab, I do the same, tug the man’s shirt down enough to carve a web over his heart.Another charm between the driver’s lips.Let Spider count its dead and know exactly who sent the bill.
By the time I reach the back of the van, Sava’s cracked the cargo latch.Six girls inside with their wrists zip-tied, eyes blown wide.The smell is fear, piss, and diesel.
“It’s okay,” Sava tells them, palms up.“You’re safe now.”
