Josh Stallings - Out There Bad

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“But if I choose to?”

“Sweet, but no.” I snapped my finger and Angel followed me to bed. Laying there, I felt like a fucking idiot. Ten feet away was a woman offering to give herself to me. A woman I could love. Not like this. I wanted to prove myself to her, prove I was worthy to be her man. She would come to me when she was strong and unafraid, and I would be more than just a thug she needed for protection. I fell asleep to the foreign murmur coming from the living room.

It was just past seven the next morning when I slipped out of the house with Angel at my side. Anya was sleeping on the sofa, snoring softly, in a sweet girlish way. Gregor looked up at me from the chair by the door where he had spent the night, he didn’t ask where I was going. He scratched Angel between the ears and watched us leave.

Picking up some pan dulce from the Mexican bakery down the street we hit the dog park. Angel’s best friend was Bruiser, a Rottweiler that had thoroughly kicked her ass as a puppy. Now at a little over a year old, they were evenly matched as they did their impression of WWF.

“When she fills out, he’s going to be sorry he wasn’t nicer when she was young.” Helen laughed, wiping away the crumbs of sugary Mexican pastry from her mouth.

“Fills out? Why didn’t you tell me I was taking in a damn horse?” Angel tackled Bruiser, flipping him onto his back. She was more into pinning and wrestling than biting.

Helen was forty-five, sloppy and overweight. If she wasn’t a friend, I’d have said she was built like a mushroom, as it was, I’d kick anyone’s ass who put her down. She spent too many hours at her computer writing T.V. scripts and too few in the real world. She was smart and witty and the first citizen to treat me like a human. We were brought together by the death of a girl we had both loved in our own ways. After it was done and I’d made the killers pay their freight, Helen and I stayed friends. I guess because we liked each other. Strange, a friendship where nothing was exchanged or bartered.

“You are so not a dog guy. Angel won’t hit her full size until she’s two years old. Did you read the book I gave you on Mastiffs or is it keeping your kitchen table from wobbling?”

“It was pretty wobbly.” I grinned at her.

“You suck, you know that Moses? You totally and fully suck.”

“But I bring you pan dulce and my silly bitch keeps Bruiser young.”

“Both good points.” She watched our dogs suddenly break from a huddle and burst across the park like two fur bullet trains. “And we have shared history, and that is worth more and more as the clock ticks by.”

“Sadie?” I asked.

“Left last night. And don’t insult me with sham surprise. I know she was too young for me, but damn she was…”

“Yes she was, Helen, yes she was.” Sadie had been her latest girlfriend. She was fine, twenty-five with a runner’s body. Not the kind that was too skinny and dehydrated looking. Muscular down deep, with just enough flesh covering it to make you think she would be soft to curl into.

“You think some people are meant to be alone?” Helen asked.

“I don’t know if I’m the guy to ask. My longest relationship is with that dog over there. But no, babe, I don’t think you’re meant to be alone. Don’t think anything is meant to be. It just is what it is.”

“Not into predestination?”

“Whatever the fuck that is,” I said a bit harder than I should have.

“Fate, destiny, the belief that our lives are planned by some higher force and we mere mortals live them out the best we can with the limited knowledge we have.”

“Oh, that predestination. No, I don’t believe some higher force is planning this life for me. If I did, I’d give up, lay down and die right now. Because it would be clear, that fuck in the sky hates my ass.”

“You are in a darker mood than usual, Moses. And what is up with the bags under your eyes?” She looked at me with true concern.

“You know me, if there’s any shit in a ten mile radius, I will step in it.”

“And what shit is it this time?”

“Do you know anything about the Russian mob trafficking women?” I knew she would, or would know where to find it. Most of her writing was on crime shows, and she was one hell of a researcher.

“This is why you came to me, right? Bribe me with some pan dulce to do your leg work?”

“There’s a girl, thirteen, I think she’s somewhere in Mexico. I have to find her.”

“No, you have to go to the feds. These Russians, they kill cops, judges, they make you look like a pansy,” she said.

“Clock is ticking on this little girl. I don’t have time for the feds. The war on terror is still the only thing they have on the brain, one Russian girl won’t even be a shadow of a blip on their screen.” I looked at her solemnly. “Can you help?”

“Damn it, Moses, these people don’t play around.”

“Neither do I.”

“Ok, alright, give me a day. I’ll see what’s on the web, call a few contacts.”

“Thank you.” Pulling Angel off Bruiser, I headed back to Highland Park.

Nika let the rumble of the tires on the road lull her, she lay back using her bag as a lumpy pillow. Her first day in this new world was spent locked in back of a sweltering, windowless van. Three other girls traveled with her. Two were from Ukraine, the third came all the way from Norilsk, up in the permanently frozen north. They had spoken in the dark — trying to keep their courage up — all agreed this wasn’t as bad as it could be. Soon they would walk onto the wonderful streets of America. They passed a jug of water, but there was no food. Their sweat and cheap perfume mixed in the stale air.

“Hey Moscow, what the fuck are you doing?” Yumma asked. At nineteen, she was the oldest of the girls, she had the thick gravel in her voice that only years of tobacco can give.

“It’s Yaroslavl.” Nika twisted, unzipping her dress.

“I don’t care fuck where you’re from, keep your dress on. You want them to think we’re whores?”

“I’m hot, and you’re not my mother.”

“Thank god for that. Do any of you useless cows have a cigarette?”

Nika pulled the dress over her head. In her slip, she felt much better. After a long, hot moment, she heard the zippers of other girls following her lead.

“Oh, that’s real classy. What will they think when they open the door and find you idiots naked?”

Twenty minutes later, Nika smiled when she heard Yumma’s zipper slowly go down.

Lunch hour came and went without a break. In the afternoon the van stopped and they could hear a loud tinny radio playing brassy music. None of the girls spoke Spanish, the rapid speech of the DJ was a blur of noise to them. They heard the gas tank filling. Nika knocked on the door, pleading that she needed to pee.

Blinding light filled their compartment. Glowing in the sun, the man with the acne-ruined face tossed a plastic bucket in to them. Before Nika’s eyes could adjust enough to make out the surroundings, the door banged closed again. It embarrassed her to squat over the bucket, but it was either that or have her bladder burst. The sound of her urine splashing down caused one of the girls to giggle.

“What?” Nika snapped. She had no idea which girl it was, but she would be damned if they would laugh at her.

“Sorry.” It was Guzel Saifutdinova, the girl from Norilsk. Nika could tell by her small mouse like voice. It was as if she thought even in their dark cage, someone would overhear her.

Nika felt a little better having lost the pain of a swollen bladder. It was the most satisfying piss she had ever had. Strange, she thought, how denying a thing can make it so much better once you got it.