Trouble (4 page)

Daisy stares at my hand, and then she wraps her arms around my middle and fists her hands into my shirt again. We make it to the mall without seeing another truck.
She doesn’t ask me when I turn off the bike in the mall parking lot what happened at the red light. Just calmly clambers off the back and puts the helmet on the seat. She shakes out her hair and runs her hand through it a few times to straighten it. She smells like my shampoo and body wash.

I’ll have to change that.

She’s wearing the jean skirt, flip flops, and the sequin top again. But it’s been washed. It smells fresh. It’s a Monday just after noon, so there’s barely anyone at the mall. A few elderly people are walking around the mall with their friends, hanging onto walkers and dragging along oxygen tanks. Their canes clank against the tile floor.

“Where do you shop?” I ask Daisy, trying to turn her attention away from the old men staring at her. She looks up at me in shock as if she forgot I was here, and I see her visibly relax.

I didn’t realize she was tense.

“I don’t know, never been here before. Is there a Victoria’s Secret?”
She sounds like a kid asking if there’s a candy store. I steer her in the direction of the Victoria’s Secret and grimace when we walk past a few more old men sitting outside on benches. She marches right past them and as soon as she’s inside I see her shrink into herself. It’s as if all this time her attitude has been a front.

The woman greets her and tells her the discounts, then raises her nose in the air and glares at me. I know what this looks like, and I don’t appreciate the look.

“Too expensive,” I hear Daisy
mutter when she picks up a bra. It’s a lacy thing with a tag that says pushup, and I want to point out to her that she doesn’t need one like that anyway. But she looks forlorn when she puts it down, and suddenly I feel a little sorry for her. I may not understand why, but she had it rough.

I’ve been saving my credit card for emergencies. It has over ten thousand dollars free on it, and the bra is only forty five dollars. I pick it up between two fingers and hand it back to her without a word. I follow her around the store like that the entire time, picking up what she looks at lovingly and puts back down. It ends up being over four hundred dollars’ worth of underwear. It’s about what I make in two days.

The next store is something that I would have never stepped foot in without a girl at my side. It’s worse than Victoria’s Secret, at least there’s the excuse of lingerie for a girlfriend there. This is nothing but tiny skirts and even smaller tops. Knowing what underwear she has on, I don’t know if I could abstain if she were wearing some of these clothes. I end up steering her right back out the door and down to a more reputable store.

The clothes she picks out are still feminine, but much less ‘I’m a hooker for hire!’ I end up spending over what I spent at Victoria’s Secret here, and I think I know what’s going on here. It’s a conspiracy, selling clothes for insane prices and making them cheap so that women come back more often. I remember my sister saying something about jeans lasting less than a year.

My wallet feels lighter, even though I know I didn’t spend any actual cash, just put it all on my credit card. Yet I feel like I’m missing something. But my arms are pretty heavy as I lug bags out to my motorcycle. Shopping on a motorcycle is not a bright idea. I should have thought about that before bringing a woman to the mall. One bag I could handle, six? No way in hell.

“Listen, I’m going to call a cab and follow you back, alright?” She looks at the bags
, and at the vehicle we arrived on, and nods. I have a feeling the clothes weigh more than her, it would be too dangerous. I pull my cellphone out of my pocket and search on Google for cab services. Then I call one and wait.

It takes about twenty minutes, but the cab finally pulls up
, and I see Daisy inside. I see the smile she flashes the cab driver and something inside me twists. She’s back to her usual self when I close the door, all flirtation. I hop on my bike and follow the cab back to my apartment, pay the driver, and help Daisy lug her bags back into my apartment.

It’s late in the afternoon by the time I’m walking through my door, and I turn around to see a few of the retired folks sitting outside in their lawn chairs. Mr.
Ishkner waves at me and I raise a hand in greeting. The man has never waved at me in my life.

I close the door to the outside world and
drop the bags on the floor right by the door. I don’t want her getting too comfortable here. She’s going to have to figure out somewhere else to stay soon. But for tonight I suppose I could order dinner. It’s not until I’m on the phone with the pizza shop down the street that I realize the bathroom door is open, and my bedroom door is closed. I calmly order a cheese pizza, some chili fries, and a few mushroom poppers.

When I hang up my cellphone
, I narrow my eyes and stalk up to my bedroom door. I don’t bother knocking, just fling open the door. For my rude entrance, I get a shirt thrown in my face and an ear splitting scream. For a girl who's tried to show me her hooch, I would have thought she wouldn’t mind being walked in on as she was getting dressed. I pull the sequin top off my face and catch sight of her pulling on a pair of jeans to cover up her bottom half.

“Pizza’s on the way, I thought I told you not to go in my room.” I say it deadly calm, but inside my mind I’m bouncing all over the place. I’m thinking about pizza, the fact that she’s in my room, and I can’t stop staring at her C cups in that red, lace push up bra I bought her. They’re
certainly doing something there, holding those babies up high.

I clear my throat and close the door as she’s pulling a shirt over her head.
I didn’t miss the yellow bruise on her hip, another hand mark. She doesn’t open the door until I have the television on and a slice of pizza in my hand. She screws up her face when I offer her a breaded mushroom. Instead, she devours the chili fries like they’re from the Gods above.

The rest of the evening I don’t bother trying to make conversation. We watch some movies, ones I don’t remember as I’m trying to fall asleep in bed. Mostly I don’t remember them because they were boring, but I was also trying not to think about the red bra. I could take her up on
the offer, but that would make me as bad as the guys who put the marks on her hip and inner thighs.

It still takes me a l
ong time to drift off to sleep.

***

I’m on my motorcycle, the wind pushing me back, so I lean over the handle bars and look over at the rider next to me. He’s smiling on his bike like he feels free, his blonde hair flying behind him. Just as we’re coming around the corner on the highway, I hit the accelerator on the bike and project myself forward. It’s like I’m flying, almost literally, across the road. And then I hear the god awful sound of a Jake brake on the other side of the highway.

“Caleb!”
Someone’s shaking me, gripping my shoulders painfully. I ball my hands up in fists and put them against my face, inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly through my nose. “Caleb?” The fingers retract and I reach out a hand to grab a thin, small wrist.

“Caleb, you’re hurting me!” I open one eye to look at the intruder, the person who interrupted my nightmare. The gray of dawn is filtering through my window; the rays of sunshine will be peeking through soon. I don’t have to be at work for another two hours.

“I thought I told you to stay out of my room.” Her face is inches from mine as I growl at her, pulling her down towards me. I’m shocked; instead of the usual sultry look on her face she actually looks afraid.

“You’re hurting me,” she whispers, her eyes wide and doe like. The words finally sink in
, and I look down at my hand wrapped tight around her wrist. I immediately peel each finger back methodically and let her go, but she doesn’t move back. “You were screaming, I thought –” I stop her with a look and point at the door. She’s wearing nothing but one of my shirts again. Her creamy thighs are almost glowing in the first rays of the sun.

Her eyes narrow and she stands up straight, her hair falling down across her front in the thin shirt.
Without another word, she turns on her heel and stomps out of my room. I watch her as she leaves my eyes unable to move away from the swing of her hips. I fall back onto the bed when my door gently closes and breathe slowly. If it had been earlier, if she weren’t so frightened, I would have pulled her down on top of me and taken the comfort I need. But it’s not earlier, and she was
scared
.

Frustrated and aching in my chest with something I don’t want to admit to the world yet, I sit up in bed and fling the covers off me.
There’s not much to fling off, I flung most of them off during the night. I lean over with my head in my hands and run them over my hair a few times to get it together. If I weren’t afraid of her hearing, I might go into the bathroom and vomit. But I still have some pride.

I grab my pants off the floor, pull on a shirt, and decide that I might as well face her angry stare. I deserve it, telling her to get out like that without even a ‘thanks’.

When I open the door to the living room, I find it empty. I sniff at the smoke coming from the kitchen and my eyes pop open wide. Is my apartment on fire?! I scramble through the small living space and grip both sides of the kitchen entrance to stop myself from stumbling into flames.

The smoke alarm starts to ding as I stare at the mess in my kitchen. It takes me a second, but the racket anger me and I grab the alarm off the ceiling. I can’t get it apart without a screw driver so I throw it on the floor, slip on one of my sneakers, and proceed to
stomp on the son of a bitch. It finally stops beeping, and I hear a sniffle within the haze of smoke.

“Can’t even make fucking eggs,” she’s mumbling, shoving a red hot pan in the sink and turning on the water. More steam billows up and she squeals as it hits her hand. “Fuck!” I hear, and sigh. I pull off my sneaker, toss it to the side, and wave the smoke and steam out of my face. My neighbors are going to
love
this.

When I finally get to her through the haze
, I see that her hair is hanging in damp strands around her face, and she’s holding her hand. She’s biting her lip to hold back tears. It’s not working very well, and mascara is running down her face. I turn off the water to stop the steam and open up the tiny window at the back of the kitchen.

Without a word, I put a hand on her back and push her out of the kitchen, gently. She walks with me to the bathroom
, and I grab her hand to check it out. Just a little red, nothing serious. I turn on the cool water and shove her hand underneath, she jumps, and goose bumps rise on her arms.

“That’s cold!”
She shouts at me, trying to pull her hand back.

“Of course it’s
cold; you tried to steam your hand like a lobster.” I tell her calmly, turning off the water and wrapping a towel around the affected hand to pat it dry.

“
I-I’m not useless!” She shouts at me, pulling her hand out of my grasp and drying her hand herself. I blink a few times and stare at her, when did I ever say that? “Get out!” She shouts at me, pointing at the bathroom door. I back away from her like she’s a feral cat dunked in the tub and out for vengeance. The door is slammed in my face, and I avoid a broken nose by about a millimeter.

I hear the toilet lid slam shut and furrow my brows, is she crying? She was crying in the kitchen, but she wasn’t crying
that
hard. What the hell did I do? And this is why I don’t keep women around, they cry, all the time. They never explain
why
they’re crying. They just do. And then they blame the man in the room like he did it. I’m pretty sure it’s some type of brain defect.

The haze is gone from my kitchen
, so I go about scrubbing the blackened pan, flakes of what used to be egg coming off the sides. It now looks like she managed to make some charcoal. It takes me a solid twenty minutes to scrub the pan and get it clean enough to shove in the dishwasher. Since the machine is full I turn it on, and when I’m finished with that I realize that the bathroom door is still shut.

“Daisy?”
I call out, gently rapping on the door. “I have to shower,” I tell her, I need to get ready for work. I have a few clients this afternoon, and I need to finish up some drawings at my desk. I hear her blow her nose and then toilet flushes. A few seconds later the sink runs, and I frown. What is she doing? When she opens up the door her face is red and puffy, her hand is still red, and she won’t look at me. I don’t move out of her way.

“Have you been crying this whole time?” I ask in disbelief
. I didn’t know a person could cry that long. I’m not an expert in it. For some reason when the situation calls for it, I can’t get the tears to flow, like the spigot has been permanently shut off. What’s wrong with me? Or better yet, what’s wrong with
her
?

“
No
,” she answered angrily, trying to shove past me. In the process, she puts her angry, red hand against my t-shirt and hisses when it hurts. I could have told her that it would.

“You have,” I say it matter of fact, but inside I’m a little torn up. What is it with women and crying, it’s like
an emotional trigger that gets me upset. If I buy her chocolate will she stop crying? I’ve seen it in movies, but somehow I don’t think that’s going to work here.

“Have not,” she
grumps, pointing at the shower. “You have to shower, and I have to –” she stops, and I roll my eyes towards the ceiling.

“You have to what?” I ask, leaning a hip against the door frame.
It leaves enough space that she thinks she can slip through; I put my hand out at the last second and catch her around the waist. I don’t know why I care, maybe because she reminds me of a broken animal or maybe it’s because I want in her pants, but for some reason I want to know what she has to do and why she’s crying.

“Nothing, I have nothing to do.” I never thought someone could sound so lost. She cleans the apartment, and after that smoke haze the kitchen could use a wipe down. But apparently that’s not
good enough for her. What does she want to say, get on your knees?

“Get a job,” I blurt out.
I’m not trying to be mean, but if she wants something to do and to stop having to rely on men to get her things, why not get a job?

“A job?”
She says it like it’s a new concept, and then she smiles up at me. “A job,” she says finitely. I hope I haven’t opened Pandora’s Box here.

“Now tell me why you were crying,” I’m not going to let it go. I want to know why she cried, and why she still looks like the waterworks might start again. Her face falls and I feel a little guilty for ruining her small internal victory.
If she’s going to be staying here for a little while, I want to
understand
her. So I can avoid having her crying in my bathroom every morning.