A Vicious Circle: Chapter 6 / 13

Tulipa

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Chapter 6

Tulipa

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Three days after the shooting, Adam still couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that he had taken the lives of two people, or how much money it had earned him.

It all happened so quickly, he thought. Like it wasn’t real but just some strange fantasy.

It wasn’t merely the manner in which Rector and his business associate had died that disturbed the young gangster, but also how rapidly everything in his life had unfolded since he had accepted Dash’s offer. He loved the way things were going with his newfound courage, the cash, the respect; he felt like an unstoppable freight train speeding ahead. However, even in the midst of that rush, he realized that he was new to the game and had to slow down, lest he derail.

Apart from the lingering reflections on his new job, his mind was occupied by the woman whose enchanting eyes had once ensnared him.

Carolyn.

For some strange reason, she kept sneaking into his head, again and again, as if his thoughts about her alone were meant to prepare him for their future encounters.

It was close to eight in the evening when his eyelids began to descend. Just a brief nap was all he would permit himself. Yet it seemed to him that he had slept no more than five minutes when he heard someone calling his name.

‘Adam! Adam!’ the woman shouted as she tried to wake her son, shaking his body with little to no regard. ‘Adam! Get up!’

‘What? What’s going on?’ he said in a drowsy voice to the woman with long brown hair, in whom he recognized his mother.

‘Someone came to see you,’ she said with a frown and her lips pressed together.

Adam propped himself on his elbows, looking frantically around the room. ‘Me? Who? What time is it?’ he asked.

‘It’s almost eleven. It’s a friend of yours,’ she muttered while straightening up.

‘A friend? What friend?’

‘How am I supposed to know? She’s blond.’

Adam suddenly realized who it was. And he was not wrong, for it was Carolyn herself who stood before him in the doorway with a bright smile. Yet even her radiant countenance was not enough to calm him down.

‘What are you doing here?’ Adam whispered as forcefully as he could. ‘You want my mother to suspect anything?’ What he meant was his recent illicit activities, but he soon realized that he sounded as if the two of them were entangled in a forbidden romance of sorts.

‘I’m sorry…’ Carolyn looked down. ‘I just wanted it to be a nice surprise, you know?’

He sighed. ‘No, I am sorry. I should’ve given you a much warmer greeting. Come here.’ Adam hugged Carolyn and drew in a lungful of her smoky perfume.

‘It’s okay,’ she said, the smile returning to her face.

‘Look, I don’t want this to come out the wrong way, but what are you doing here?’

‘I was kinda bored and thought maybe we could hang out or go do something fun. What do you think?’

‘Well…’ Adam looked over his shoulder. His mother was nowhere to be seen. ‘Sure, let me just put on my shoes and jacket.’

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Carolyn was driving. She knew where they were headed, but she kept it to herself, afraid that if she told him, Adam might not have agreed to come along.

‘Hey, take this,’ Carolyn said.

‘What is this?’

‘Something nice, okay? Come on, light her up!’

Adam squinted. ‘Is this a cigarette?’ he asked, turning the thing over in his hand, studying it from every angle.

‘Yeah, sure, call it a cigarette. Just take a drag and quit whining. You’ll like it, trust me.’

Adam did as he was told. He felt groggy to begin with and had no idea what it was that he was inhaling. And he soon realized that he didn’t even care anymore; his worries dispersed like the smoke and he simply chose to enjoy the gift. He was completely unaware of their current whereabouts. He did notice that they were passing a number of city-limit signs, but he couldn’t discern the letters due to the car’s speed and the influence of the mysterious substance that was now running through his body. Awake though he was, he could barely keep his eyelids open.

Almost an hour after Adam had inhaled the curious smoke, Carolyn grabbed and shook his shoulders. ‘Get up! We’ve arrived!’

‘Where are we?’ Adam said after closing the car door.

‘Look for yourself!’ Carolyn pointed toward the glowing building up ahead. Above it, pink and purple neon lights spelled out the restaurant’s name: The Half Moon Diner. ‘They’re doing fifties hits tonight. Hope you don’t mind a little retro action,’ she added with a grin, biting her lip.

‘If you’re into that kinda thing. Nothing wrong with that, I guess.’

Carloyn brightened up. ‘Amazing! Let’s go, let us go!’ she took his hand and off they ran into the building.

The place was divided into two parts. The first room held a bar and several crowded tables, while in the back stretched a broad dance floor lit with dim, shifting lights, where a DJ played the old-fashioned music and threw in a few words between the tunes.

Adam and Carolyn sat across from each other at a corner table. The meager light gave the room an intimacy that both of them seemed to welcome.

‘So, tell me something about you, Mr. New-Guy,’ she said once their drinks had arrived.

He shrugged. ‘There’s nothing to tell, really.’

‘Come on, don’t be like that!’ She slapped his forearm. ‘You’re in your twenties, right? Something must’ve happened by now! You can bullshit Bobby, but you won’t bullshit me, you know.’

‘I don’t know what to tell you.’ He shrugged again, as though it were the only thing he did in life. He took a sip of his beer, and after a few seconds said, ‘Wouldn’t shock me if I were the most boring guy to walk the earth.’

‘And why would that be?’ she asked, then drank from her Caipirinha through a short, black straw.

‘There just hasn’t been anything exciting in my life, you know. Except maybe for that thing the other day… if you can call that exciting.’

‘Meaning?’ she asked, raising a brow.

He hesitated at first, but then forced himself to look into those magnificent eyes of hers again. ‘My best friend. He was, uh… he was murdered.’

Carolyn craned forward, her mouth falling open. ‘Oh shit! Are you serious right now?’

‘I wish I wasn’t…’ He nodded slowly, his gaze resting on the table but fixed on something only he could see. ‘It happened on a bus. We were on our way home when all of a sudden that…’ Adam swallowed hard and, as it were, coughed up the rest of the words, ‘that son of a bitch took a shotgun out of his backpack and shot Peter in the head. It was so close, he almost blew my brains out!’

‘Damn, Adam… that’s really heavy. I’m so sorry,’ Carolyn said. She reached across the table and put her trembling hand over his.

‘It is. But then again, if that hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t be sitting here together now,’ Adam said as he tried to heave the corner of his lips into a smile.

‘W-what do you mean?’

‘What I’m trying to say is that because of Pete’s death, I got the opportunity to work for Dash. I fill in for him in a way. Dash met me at Peter’s funeral and asked me to work for him. That’s how I ended up meeting Bobby, and eventually you.’ Repeating that thought pulled a cheerful smile out of him. ‘I’m basically living the dream!’

She smiled back. ‘I guess you could call that a blessing in disguise.’

‘And how about you? Bobby said you sell…’ He looked around. ‘This and that. Is it true?’

‘Yeah. It’s a risky job, sure. But it gets me by. Pays the bills, you know?’

‘Right,’ Adam said with a small nod. ‘So how’d you get into all this in the first place? If you don’t mind me asking.’

‘Sure.’ Carolyn stared into her glass. It was half-empty by now. ‘Started doing it with Bobby when I was about fifteen.’

‘Wow. I mean, that’s pretty early, right?’

‘I didn’t have a choice!’ she thundered. For a few good seconds she looked at him as if accusing him of a crime he never committed. Then her gaze fell again. ‘Our mom died that same year.’ Her chest rose before she sighed. ‘For my dad, that meant he could finally run wild without worrying that his wife might cut off his money supply. She was the only one who ever brought home the bacon. He never did. After she had died, we got some kind of aid or pension, or whatever you wanna call it, when my old man got on disability. Disability, my ass. But instead of managing the money like an adult, he blew it all on booze, parties, hookers.’ Her face looked like she’d just bit into one of the limes of her Caipirinha. ‘We lived on dry bread and water for weeks… or milk if times got better. We were so fucking done by then, so Bobby and I finally decided to do something. Bobby had this friend… he talked to him, and the guy got us into sales… but we barely made enough for one person. Later, Bobby got recruited by Dash full-time, so I kept most of the profits for myself. Since then…’ She lifted her hand and showed a small space between her index finger and her thumb. ‘Life’s been a little better. At least it’s not total hell anymore.’

‘So… there really wasn’t any other way, huh?’

‘Maybe there was, but what was I supposed to do, hoping the perfect opportunity comes knocking at my door? Please. Besides, time wasn’t really on my side, either. All those trade classes, universities? That shit costs a lot of money and it takes forever, Adam.’

‘I hear you.’ Adam took another sip of his beer. He didn’t want to set her off again by saying the wrong thing.

‘And it’s been like that ever since. Like I said, things ain’t that bad now. Could always be worse.’

‘There’s no shame in hard work, you know.’

‘That’s right…’ Carolyn drew on her drink again, the ice clinking against the glass. ‘Damn, we really bummed ourselves out, huh?’ She glanced over her shoulder at the lights spilling from the other room. ‘Come on, let’s dance a little! It’ll cheer us up! Come on!’

When they took the floor, Bobby Darin’s Dream Lover was blaring through the loudspeakers. Adam had no idea how to dance, so he watched the others and copied their moves to blend in.

Without either Adam or Carolyn noticing, a tall, muscular man came up behind her while they danced and grabbed her by the hips, pressing himself against her. Carolyn struggled to free herself from him, but he was holding on too hard. The moment Adam saw her distress, he wasted no time and rushed over to the intruder. He pushed the man away, sending him crashing onto his back.

‘Keep it in your pants, you fucking creep! She’s with me!’ Adam screamed and the music stopped playing.

‘What did you just call me?’ the formidably sized man said as he rose to his feet. He approached Adam slowly, a mock smile spreading across his face. ‘You just made a bad mistake, my man.’

Adam’s opponent swung at him several times but Styles kept dodging the rapid blows slicing past his cheeks. Once the predator lost patience, he grabbed an empty beer bottle from the DJ’s console and shattered it against the turntables, brandishing the jagged glass in front of Adam’s face. The young gangster managed to evade the bottle a few more times, but when his back hit the wall, his agile foe took advantage of his distraction and carved a deep cut from the left temple all the way down to his jawline. Adam let out a deafening scream and covered the side of his face with his hand, blood streaming between the fingers. Three security guards appeared almost immediately, drawn by the scream from across the establishment. Two of them dragged the troublemaker outside, while the third one led Adam and Carolyn to the security office, where he disinfected Adam’s wound, pressed a wad of gauze over it, and secured it with two strips of tape.

‘He got you pretty bad, buddy. You want me to call the cops or an ambulance?’ the security guard asked, a middle-aged man with a round face and a neatly trimmed mustache.

‘No, there’s no need. I think I’ll make it. But thanks,’ Adam mumbled through clenched teeth.

‘We’re outta here!’ Carolyn shot up from her chair and stormed toward the exit. ‘Guess it’s too much to ask for one damn night without some freak trying to start shit!’

‘Hey, I’m not the one who started the fight, young lady. Well, anyway, you two have yourselves a good night now,’ the security guard said, tugging his cap up to let a bit of air in.

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Not one word left their mouths the whole way back. Adam didn’t have the energy to talk and Carolyn, full of shame and regret, felt too guilty about the incident to speak and pretend nothing had ever happened.

‘We’ve arrived,’ Carolyn mumbled, staring out the window beside her.

‘Thanks for the ride. See you around.’

‘Wait!’ Carolyn shouted when he was about to open the door, then cleared her throat. ‘Can you just… sit down for a sec? she asked. When he didn’t answer, she added, ‘Please?’

Adam agreed. ‘What is it?’ he said, all the while watching the raindrops punch and slide down the windshield.

Carolyn hung her head. ‘I… I’m sorry, okay?’

He faced her. ‘What for?’

‘It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t taken you there, none of that shit would’ve gone down. I feel so damn stupid about it…’ Carolyn blinked fast, her eyes welling up.

‘Carolyn, come on. You can’t blame yourself for wanting to have some fun.’

She looked him square in the eye while he held her pale hand.

‘I mean, we had an amazing time! Who could’ve foreseen that dirty creep would show up? Even that dude’s weapon was creepy; the bottle looked like a fucking tulip or something. Anyway, I don’t think either of us planned to end up in a fight tonight. I hope you’re all right?’

‘I am.’ Carolyn nodded with a faint smile. ‘Thanks for being cool about it.’

‘I think I should be the one to be thankful here.’

‘For what? You can’t mean that…’ Carolyn pointed at the blood-soaked bandage covering his cut face.

‘No, no, it’s not that. Look, I gotta admit, I was pretty damn stoked when you showed up at my door. A couple weeks ago I didn’t have a life, and now I’m seeing this amazing girl, and she’s freakin’ gorgeous, too!’ He ran his fingertips along her jaw. ‘But I don’t get it, what do you see in a guy like me? You take me out, I can’t dance, I can’t fight, I barely got anything smart to say. I make an ass of myself all night long and you’re the one driving me home and apologizing. I mean… why me?’

‘You do realize that I’m in love with you, stupid?’

Adam was speechless. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.

Carolyn moved toward him with an unhurried certainty and straddled his lap. The chair yielded beneath them when their mouths met. Her slender fingers tangled in his hair while his hands traced the curves of her body with the care of a sculptor perfecting his craft. The world around them dissolved. There was only warmth, desire, and motion – two bodies drifting closer, seeking a shared rhythm.

Once their passion had spent itself, they fell asleep in each other’s arms, forgetting the trouble they had been through at the Half Moon Diner.

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END OF CHAPTER 6