Through a Glass, Darkly (Assassins of Youth MC #1) (22 page)

I did take the precaution of stepping to one side of the door after entering. My eyes were still adjusting to the dimness of the bar when Mahalia flung herself at me.

“Gideon! My blessing! My dear, sweet blessing!” She buried her face in my neck as I circled her waist in my palms. She smelled fresh, like the pines of the high desert.

The coils of her elaborate hairstyle were soft against my cheek. So many times in that little single bed in the guest house I had jacked my dick thinking of taking her hair down. After such a string of bad luck lately, it was impossible to believe that doing that was within my reach now. Maybe it took Mahalia’s God to smile down on me, for once.

“You’re safe now,” I murmured into her hair. “It’s going to be smooth sailing from now on.”

Holding her tight, I glanced around. Skippy Cavanaugh was wiping the bar with a rag like some old timey western bartender, glaring at us as though we were Negroes—which Mahalia was, partially, in her background. Kimball sat at a table with two kids maybe eight or ten, kicking their legs impatiently. It looked like Kimball was the one who couldn’t wait for a glass of wine. Vonda was there, texting or Instagramming or whatever teenagers did.

Mahalia pulled back a few inches. “I’m sorry we came here.” I thought I could feel her heart hammering in her chest, tapping against mine. “Vonda and I were walking down the highway with our suitcases when Kimball drove up, and she wanted a drink bad after her narrow escape.”

“I’ll bet.” I turned to my men. “I suppose the coast is clear. Go ahead and have some drinks if you want.”

But when I went to sit down at an adjacent table, a white-haired riding club guy approached me. He said in a deep, gentlemanly tone, “Don’t mean to interrupt. But I just saw Allred Chiles and Parley Pipkin drive by, real slow like. Like they were scoping out this place.”

“Really? Thanks, my man,” I said. I sat Mahalia down at the table and went out the side door to look. Sure as shit, Chiles’ shiny black Humvee was in the process of another slow-mo drive-by. As if hoping to intimidate people with their mere glances, they were staring at me like I was a train wreck, slowly moving on down Crosstown Street.

The silver fox said, “They’ve been doing that for half an hour, ever since the ladies arrived.”

“They haven’t stopped or said anything?”

“Nope. Just doing that asinine driving, like they’re striking fear into people’s hearts.”

“We fucking hate it,” said another riding club biker. “They do it all the time to put the fear of God into us.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Just to be big shot bastards,” said the silver fox. He held out his hand for me to shake. “I’m Maximus. Seen you around.”

“I’m Gideon. Yeah, I just bought a house down on Cumming Street, so you’ll be seeing more of us. Don’t mean to infringe on your turf. We’ll get these ladies out of here pronto.”

“Hell, you’re not infringing,” said Maximus. “We don’t consider this our turf. It’s not like we’re one percenters. This is just a convenient spot between St. George and Cedar City for us to meet up, play pool. We’re glad to have you here. See? There they go again.”

I couldn’t resist flipping off the Humvee, and several riding club guys joined me, laughing at their audacity.

“Whoo hoo!” said one. “Feels good to finally tell them off.”

I almost laughed, that they would think such a sign of rebellion was going to affect an arrogant peckerhead like Allred Lee Chiles. But I was too stressed to laugh.

Going back inside the bar, I sat down next to Mahalia. “Ladies. We’ll be taking you out of here in a few.”

“Let me order another glass of wine,” said Kimball.

“I’ve got whiskey and beer at the house,” I said, “and can easily get you wine. Mahalia, you’ve got Chiles’ cell number in your phone. Let me have it.”

“Sure.” Like a good old lady, she didn’t ask me what for. She just scrolled to the number and handed me her phone.

“What are you doing?” asked Sledgehammer, protectively sitting on the other side of the kids, near Vonda.

I held up my phone so he could squint and see the photos Dust Bunny had sent me. “I’ve got a way of keeping them away from Avalanche.” I tapped the photo of the recently dead guy’s gaping mouth. The skin pulled tightly away from his nose and eye sockets, like desiccated jerky. His arm even clawed its way out of the soil, as if he’d been buried alive. I hoped to hell not. Not in
my
mine.

“Ho ho!” laughed Sledge. “Those the photos you were mentioning? Extremely good one, Fortunati. That’ll keep that sleazy lizard off our backs.”

The moment I hit the
SEND
button a huge wave of relief washed over me. “Hang on,” I told Mahalia, and sprinted back outside.

“What’s he up to?” Maximus asked me.

The Humvee was stopped in the middle of the road, which didn’t get much traffic, thanks to Chiles turning it into a ghost town. I aimed to take it back from him, to reclaim the town for my own. Now, for the first time, this goal seemed within reach.

Chiles was frowning at his phone, turning it this way and that.

“Did we not get the contrast right?” asked Dingo, who had appeared at my elbow. “Maybe the res of the photos isn’t very good.”

“They’re high-res enough, all right,” I said. “Watch.”

Realization slowly spread over the scum-sucking fuckwad’s face. Hope and vindication swelled in my chest when he lifted his idiotic face and stared emptily at me, slack-jawed.

I nodded cheerfully at him, giving another middle finger salute. The riding club guys did too, though they didn’t know why. Chiles mouthed a couple words to Pipkin. Pipkin drove off with more urgency this time, hanging a left at the T that led to Cornucopia.

“Whatever you sent him, it’s good,” said Maximus.

“Oh, it’s fucking good.” Dingo bobbed his head in agreement. “It’s fucking good.”

Dingo was finally getting a sense of who we were as a club. This was his first experience with club pride. I knew the feeling. I was fit to bust with our accomplishments. We were making headway in Avalanche.

MAHALIA

S
o there I
was. Riding a borrowed “Yellow Bike” down the sandy road of Nine O’Clock Street. I hadn’t ridden a bike since I was ten, but like they say, you never forget.

At first, I’d felt ridiculous in this horde of half-naked, painted, dusty people. I only had my Cornucopia clothes, and the only other woman we knew was Kimball, whose clothes were just as inappropriate as mine. So a couple of nights ago, when we stopped to sleep in a motel in Battle Mountain, Nevada, I picked up some items in a convenience store.

That turned out to be the last place I could purchase a shred of clothing, so I was stuck with an electric purple bikini, a T-shirt blaring that I hearted Nevada, and some scarves I could tie around myself. At first, I was hugely shy for Gideon to see me wearing this minimalist garb. After all, he was
already
dressed like he was a Burner. He didn’t need to change one iota of his attire to fit right in, and he could ride his bike hands-free. He normally carried a bandanna to tie around his face to keep the bugs out when he rode. Luckily he’d brought a few of them, and the three of us now rode our bikes back to our camp, looking like terrorists with the colorful scarves covering most of our faces to keep out the incessant dust, with sunglasses on top of that.

We’d just come from the playa, zig-zagging through Burners in steampunk boots, wearing suits of broken glass, or painted skull faces from the Day of the Dead. Half-naked women with only glittery stars for pasties pranced by in furry Eskimo boots, or wearing harem pants only, their perfect breasts hand-painted with swirls. They made me feel ashamed at how “curvy” I was, although I felt I blended in a bit more now that Gideon had bartered a headdress for me made of beaded medallions and hawk’s feathers. I had round aviator goggles too, adding to the effect. He’d traded quartz specimens for them. Luckily he’d brought a few boxes—“flats”—of those along in my truck, as I quickly discovered everything worked on the barter system. I had nothing to trade, accounting skills not being needed much here.

Vonda was even more awestruck than I was. At least I had a couple of decades’ worth of experience on the outside, albeit in a straight and narrow existence, in my “Mormon bubble.” She’d been ten when we moved to Cornucopia, missing out on a lot of pop culture. She didn’t know why a group of people were dressed as zombies. “Are they dead? How can they walk if they’re dead? But half their flesh is gone. How do they move their legs?” And I didn’t have many answers, either. Vonda was a ceaseless chatterbox. Brazenly, she’d gotten a bikini too, although her T-shirt said “Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Should be a convenience store, not a government agency.” She’d had a handful of her hair temporarily braided and dyed pink. She wanted to know everything about everything, and that was where Gideon came in handy.

It touched my heart, seeing how they bonded. She had already declared him a “fox” and a “hellafine babe,” not to mention, “Mom, how’d you score such a smoking hot guy?” I remembered that Vonda was maturing—although still and maybe
never
old enough to wed!—and that she’d actually been boy crazy for a couple of years. Gideon patiently explained to her about Mad Max, steampunk, the significance of an enormous empty picture frame or a twenty foot tall goose made entirely of pennies.

Vonda loved the art installations, of course, being an artistic sort herself. She’d seen a neon sign saying “You are exactly where you need to be.” She climbed on the giant typewriter, the monstrous serpent skeleton they would later set on fire, the amazing art cars that must’ve taken the participants all year to build. She was inspired in her clothing designing, she said, by a man wearing a combination coyote and steer horns headdress. Other influences included belly dancing skirts adorned with tiny mirrors, four inch platform boots, and a guy with metallic wings he could crank open and closed.

We had to get over our guilt and prudishness at the sight of so much exposed flesh. I even accepted a free mojito, although Gideon advised me not to drink it. I was both an alcohol and a marijuana virgin. Everyone, it seemed, was touching each other. We even rode our bikes past the Orgy Dome, and I’d snuck glances to see if Gideon was considering it—he wasn’t. Growing up in an environment where people rarely touched at all, suddenly we were thrust into a microcosm of tantric eroticism. But the more I saw of it, the more it lost its ability to shock.

It was a wild and weird time, and I actually didn’t get to talk to Gideon much. The silver-haired gentleman biker Maximus of the Lazzat Un Nisa Society—what they called their riding club—had loaned us two tents, and tonight Gideon and I would sleep under its flimsy covering together, just the two of us. It was almost nine, and Gideon had promised Vonda he’d take her to sunrise yoga, a squirt gun fight, to climb on top of a giant DREAM art installation, to hear a dubstep group perform, and to a bar that made you wear stilts to get a drink. He said he’d get her a Shirley Temple.

We rode past a massage camp, a foot spa camp, a coffee shop, a beekeeping tent, and at least two bike repair camps. I was still extremely out of my comfort zone, as the teens said. I’d originally been planning on turning my Cornucopia dress into just a skirt so at least I had something to cover my ample ass. I’d dropped it off at a seamstress, but now I couldn’t remember how to get back there, and there was no cell service.

Like many people, we wanted to climb up on our truck’s cab and watch the sun set. I was already feeling like a hippie as Gideon reached an arm down to hoist me up, then Vonda. He’d ordered me a pair of lace-up moccasins to replace the stodgy black leather shoes I’d worn for years. Vonda would have a pair of sheepskin ones ready for her tomorrow. They’d keep the dust out.

We all sat cross-legged. It was a wonder to see more of the village from this vantage point. Vonda had already climbed many of the art installations, but I think I was in such culture shock I wasn’t ready yet. From on top of the truck, I could see more of the half-moon shape of the layout of Black Rock City. Folks were climbing their RVs, their art cars, their port-a-potties, anything to give them a slightly better view of the sunset. Of course all this was accompanied by a constant cacophony, a chatter of voices and music and far-off chanting coming from the playa.

“Mom, you wouldn’t
believe
it,” raved Vonda. “While you were getting a hot dog, I took part in a potato sack race.”

“Not naked, I hope,” I said primly.

“Of course not. And I got a massage from a guy running a coffee shop.”

“Where was I?”

“You were in the bookmobile.”

“My bookish woman,” Gideon said warmly.

Vonda continued, “Then we had a smoothie, and I wanted to go into the Peep Show Shower, but Gideon didn’t want to.”

I nodded. “Excellent parental guidance, Gideon. You’ll be a good father yet. I’m sure you monitored the massage she got.”

“Oh, it was all on the up and up.”

“It wasn’t the Orgy Tent, mom! There was a human petting zoo. And a giant question mark in the middle of nowhere.”