Wanted (17 page)

There was no more caution left as I reached up and traced the outline of the serpent on his neck. I didn’t see earlier how the black outline of the body blended so well with the dark green, or how the eyes were shaped like diamonds and a faded sort of red. He shivered visibly when I pulled my hand away. I saw his breathing increase and the muscles on his neck flex, but he didn’t look at me, not just then, anyway. He smiled weakly instead.

“Yeah, it’s a kinda job killer.” He used his free hand to rub his neck right over the spot where the serpent lay. I suspected something was bothering him again. He seemed self-conscience all of the sudden, wanting to hide away.

I pulled his hand away and laughed. “Well, if it’s any consolation, I like it.”

He looked down at our hands and smiled.

“How long have you had that?”

“A few years.”

“Did you get it when you were in prison?”

I could tell my question took him off guard. Maybe he had forgotten what I already knew about him and our earlier conversations. Or maybe that was just a part of the past he wanted to forget—my constant reminding becoming an annoyance for him. I decided I wouldn’t ask him about prison anymore, because while I had every confidence he wouldn’t harm me, I still didn’t want to risk him losing his temper again and hurt himself or someone else. While we hadn’t known each other long, I could see that it was one of the main sources of his suffering.

“You gotta be a different person in there—lookin’ different helps.”

Not having much to contribute to the conversation, I tried to make it less uncomfortable with humor. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that appearances aren’t everything?”

He looked at me but didn’t smile. “Yeah,” he said. “You’re right. Sometimes you gotta act different, too.” For the rest of my life I’ll always remember what happened next. Without the slightest hesitation, he turned over his arm and put out the remaining end of the cigarette directly on his inner arm.

I screamed but covered my mouth when I heard the echo of it on the sea. He remained completely calm and unflinching as he damaged himself, really more like some kind of a robot than a man. It was only when he heard me shout that he pulled it away.

“Stop that!” I hit his arm as hard as I could until I was sure the offending weapon was away. Once that was done, I took his arm to inspect the damage. He gave it to me willingly, seemingly unaffected by the burn he had just given himself.

I could see the seared flesh in a perfect little circle where he had branded himself. The damage was already done, the blistering edge of healthy skin sheltering an angry red center. My lower lip began to tremble as I looked closer at the burn and all the rest that surrounded it. Placid white scars ran up and down his arm as evidence of his self-abuse. I could only guess how old some were. What was upsetting was how easily I could imagine him doing that to himself in an attempt to act like a lunatic. I placed my thumb over some of the faintest and smeared my tears that had fallen there.

He lifted my chin very slightly with the same delicacy one might treat a porcelain doll. But seeing the unrelenting tenderness he showed me side by side with his clear lack of self-regard just made me cry harder.

“The crazier you act, the easier it is to get by in there. That’s all,” he tried to reassure me with a smile, but I wasn’t having it.

“No!” My voice was so firm it extinguished the smile from his face.

“I don’t care what the social etiquette is amongst criminals! I don’t want you to hurt yourself anymore, okay?” I was practically yelling, but it didn’t matter as long as I got my point across. “Promise me, okay? I know you don’t owe me anything, but I want you to promise me, Charlie, okay? Even if it’s a lie, promise you won’t do that ever again, or anything else like that!”

He silenced me by pulling me into his arms and letting me collapse there. Feeling my head against his chest and hearing his heart beating as fast as it was could have been enough to stop my tears, but his arms belted me in and offered a safety I had never experienced. It made me never want to leave. And honestly, if he offered me a lifetime pass to stay there I would have happily accepted right then and there.

“I promise, okay?” His voice cracked. Maybe he thought I was hysterical. “I promise. I promise. I promise. I promise…” He kept whispering the words in my ear until I settled down. “If it makes you happy, I’ll promise, okay?” He sounded completely desperate but managed to laugh a little of his Charlie laugh for me.

I breathed in the scent of him, feeling all at once ridiculous and relieved. He probably thought I was a nutcase who needed constant supervision or I might run wild on the ship. As long as I didn’t have to see him hurt himself intentionally ever again, that would have been fine with me.

“Did you know that almost all colors have some red, blue, and yellow in ‘em?” His voice was cracking so I just let him talk on—the sound of him was all that mattered in that moment.

“Midnight green doesn’t have any red. And the green and blue are as close as ‘bout two colors can be while still being separate…that’s what this color is,” he indicated to the serpent, “or was supposed to be.”

I could feel myself smiling. “You drew it yourself, didn’t you?”

“Of course.”

I pulled away and basked in his grin.

“What, the sailor stuff?”

“Yes, I imagine there’s plenty of that to do around here.”

He ran his fingers through his hair to move it from his vision. Loose strands would float in front of his eye every so often and he would brush them away without thinking about it. But he never took his eyes from the paper.

“Yeah, there’s a lot to do. But since you’ve made it real clear you ain’t gonna be still for real long and cause all kind of mischief, I figure I should just keep an eye on you.”

I rolled my eyes. “Excuse me, but I’ve been very well-behaved.”

“You weren’t supposed to, but you managed to make your way down to the engine room.”

I almost fell off the bed. Though it made me nervous to mention it, I knew I couldn’t leave without knowing the answer. “Hey, Charlie, what does Polo make down there, anyway?”

Charlie smiled down at his paper. “Nothin’ but trouble,” he mumbled. He looked up at me again for a moment. I think maybe he was deciding something. I could only hope it was a decision in my favor. “He makes all the explosives we use to bust into latched storage spaces, trucks, whatever. Most of the time we only gotta put one knocker on the main door.”

I interrupted. “Right. That’s why the ‘knock, knock’?”

He smiled. “Funny…that guy can barely read, but he makes those things go boom without any smoke or noise.”

“You mean the bombs.”

He stopped stretching and his smile disappeared completely. “They ain’t bombs.”

“You use them for blowing things up.”

“Nah, not really.”

“Polo said—” I clicked to start a new game.

“You really gonna go listenin’ to Polo?” He sighed. I saw him gnash his teeth, but I didn’t say anything else. Instead of continuing the sketch, he twirled the pencil in his fingers.

“Well, what are they for, then?” It came out all slurred and I wasn’t sure if he heard me.

“What?”

“You heard me.” I figured he probably hadn’t, but I wanted to sound aggressive. There could be no compromising stand concerning the lives of others. “What are they for?”

Now that he understood, he smiled and casually began sketching again. “Distractin’ people sometimes, playing pranks…”

“Do you—”

“No.” His voice was stern, giving me a warning I knew not to cross. “I would if it came down to it, but none of us ain’t done nothing like that yet. Polo basically makes smoke bombs down there. It’s real good if we can’t break into a truck or a warehouse and we need to buy some time. Other kinds we set off in the storage houses after we’re done with ‘em, burns away evidence we were there.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. I hadn’t realized I had been holding my breath the entire time. While Charlie and the guys had great potential to hurt others, their ability to do so was within their realm of necessity. And for some reason that brought me little comfort. What if the others had agreed with Wallace about the need to hurt me? Would I have been mere ash in that house?

“We’re just thieves, Addie.” He looked up at me then ,and although the corner of his lips turned up, I could sense a lie there. I could see something that wasn’t right. “Nobody hurts nobody unless we gotta.”

“And yet you’ve killed people before?”

I sensed he was getting annoyed. Maybe I was treading on territory he didn’t want to talk about. I needed to be very clear, though. If I was going to know as much about him as I wanted to, then I was going to have to be.

“I told you I wasn’t a nice guy. I meant that, Addie. I killed people before that I didn’t have to.”

We both let that sink in. As horrifying as it was, I didn’t have any difficulty believing him. I could see in my mind’s eye the rage of a moment taking him over and snuffing out a life before the sensibility of the situation allowed him to do anything rational.. In other scenarios, I could justify self-defense and I could tell myself that taking life during times of war was also permissible…but what Charlie and the others did was hardly a matter of survival. For them it was about profit, about how much money they could make while still avoiding punishment from the law.

And yet, how could I be allowed to judge? Charlie did have a point. My family was fortunate enough to not have to worry too much about financial matters. We lived in a good community, we were happy, and right up until Mom became sick, our biggest problem was running out of space on the bookshelf. I had switched out the last two summers of summer camp for waitressing at my Dad’s golf course—but it was the sort of employment that was designed to “build character.” I had always been provided for and never wanted for anything. With a different sort of life, who’s to say that I wouldn’t have been capable of far worse than anyone else?

I closed the laptop and picked up one of his sketchbooks. I began flipping through it page by page, taking my time with some of the drawings I found particularly beautiful. Toward the middle of the book was an incredible grandfather clock, sketched in afternoon light over an intricate Persian rug.

“Do you hate me now?” His tone was soft, on the verge of being broken.

I flipped the book closed and sat on the floor beside him. It marveled me how dangerous he could be one minute and how very much like a child the next.

“How could I hate you?” I rested my head against him “This has been, and statistically speaking, probably will be, the greatest adventure of my life.”

The moment I said it, I realized it was true. It wasn’t just something I was saying to bring him comfort, something to make someone else feel better. For once, I was having an experience of my own, and while it had been terrifying at first, it had also been a wonderful thrill. Charlie tensed against me. I was afraid I’d said something wrong, but I cut him off before he could ponder it further. “Remind me to thank whichever one of the guys it was who wanted coffee.”

He chuckled warmly. “You’re supposed to be seventeen, right?”

I laughed. “Yes, why?”

“Ya don’t seem like it.” He smiled.

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

He paused; his smile lapsed into a frown. “Addie, you’re just a kid.”

“I might be young, but at least I can control my temper. You should be old enough to know better.”

“How old do you think I am?”

I looked up at him and pretended to examine his face. Truthfully, I had already spent numerous moments considering this question.

“I’m not sure. Enlighten me.”

It was obvious he was indecisive about whether or not he wanted to answer. I was about to remind him that when I got home I had every intention of doing the most extensive research on him available.

“Twenty-nine,” he said finally.

“Hmm.” It was good to know that I hadn’t been too far off.

He laughed a little, although it sounded a little uncertain. “You probably gotta set an age maximum for your beaus. I bet you start turning them away around twenty-five just to narrow ‘em down.”

I hit him on the arm, although it wasn’t with much effort. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m not the sort of girl that
has
guys.” I felt the blush creeping up in my cheeks and cursed myself. “I’ve never had any guys.”