Adrian McKinty - The Dead Yard

“What rumors?”

Before I can respond, the wind wafts up the arm on my T-shirt and Kit pulls it down again.

“Was that from your motorcycle accident as well?” she asks.

“What?”

“You have a little scar on your shoulder. I noticed it when you were dressed as a gladiator, too.”

And I look at her to see how far I can go. This is a real opportunity. The professional, cool, clear-thinking Michael Forsythe would say “Yeah, from the motorbike accident,” but I know I’m not going to. I’m going to jump across that river and give her a piece of the truth. I’m going to give her a wee bit of the real me and see what she does with it. Will it be reciprocated with trust and silence?

“I had a tattoo removed,” I say.

“What was it?”

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Sure,” she says, much too breezily for my liking.

“You can’t tell Touched. You can’t tell anybody. They’ll get the wrong idea.”

“I promise,” she says, getting serious now.

“It was a winged harp, which was my old regimental insignia. I was in the British Army for about eleven months.

The Royal Irish Rangers. They don’t exist anymore, they got merged into another regiment.”

“You were in the British Army?” Kit asks, to confirm it.

“That’s right. I was unemployed, had nothing else going for me. It seemed the right idea at the time, but we didn’t gel, the army and me, they kicked me out with a dishonorable discharge.”

“I can see why you don’t want Touched to know,” Kit says without inflection.

“You’ll keep it a secret?”

“Of course,” she says indignantly. “It doesn’t bother me in the least.”

“Thanks. It’s the only secret I’ve got, I promise,” I tell her.

“Well, I can think of a million worse ones than joining the army when you were young and dumb,” she says, pleasing me with the answer.

“Me, too.”

She manages a little grin and then I grab the moment and kiss her lightly on the forehead.

“Do that again,” she says, those big azure eyes closing in anticipation.

I kiss her on the mouth.

“I liked that,” she says. “I shouldn’t, but I do.”

“I liked it too,” I tell her and I’m glad now that I told her that little piece of truth. For although I’m a liar, this, between her and me, isn’t part of the lie. I’m not using her to get that million dollars. She’s a different part of this completely.

And what is it about her exactly?

She’s beautiful. But that’s not it. And she’s mixed up, but that’s not it either.

There’s something else.

It’s that feeling of regret I get when I look at her. It’s that ache of memory.

Again she reminds me of Bridget, that other lost girl, in a place and time that seem centuries ago.

I couldn’t save Bridget. I couldn’t stop her following my path, the road to horror and war and vengeance. I couldn’t stop Bridget forgetting her old self and becoming this cold and terrible machine of death. I couldn’t stop her because it was me that pushed her down that road in the first place. It was me that killed her fiancé. And if Dan Connolly is right, that story isn’t finished yet.

But there’s nothing I can do about that now. History can’t be unwritten.

Kit, though. I can save Kit.

I can stop her descent into hell.

I can eliminate the influence of those two evil stars.

And when it’s their time, I’ll figure out a way to get her out.

Away from these people and this situation. When it goes down, I’ll fix it, so she won’t go sink too.

“Kit, I…” I try, but I don’t know what to say.

She finds the words.

“Sean, I know it’s wrong, but I want you to touch me,” she says in a whisper.

I slip my hand under her sweater and I touch the cool skin of her belly and her small breasts and I hold her back and I pull her close and kiss her.

“Slowly,” she says.

And I kiss and I hold her, and run my hands down her spine and up her thighs and between her legs. And she tenses and I ease her away and let her go and it is so painful that in a moment of candor I can no longer deny what I’ve been fighting against.

“I need you,” I tell her.

She shakes her head.

“You don’t,” she says.

I kiss her and, my God, I want her. Here on this beach under this dark sky. It will do everything for me. It will heal me. It will make me whole. It will unmake from me the murder in my blood and fingertips. I need to give myself completely to her. I need to hold and be inside her and be one with her. And I know she needs me, too.

I lift her shirt and kiss her belly.

“Yes,” she says.

She pulls me on top of her and her hands run over my back and they’re so cold. I kiss her and lift up her shirt and kiss her underneath her breasts and her nipples and gently I begin to undo the buttons on her jeans.

“Stop,” she whispers.

I kiss her belly button and her shoulder tattoo and undo the last button and begin to pull down her trousers.

“No,” she says. “Stop.”

And I shake my head and moisten her lips and kiss her freezing arms and- “I said stop,” she says angrily and pushes me off.

“Ok, I’ll stop,” I tell her, hurt.

“You’re all the fucking same, aren’t you? Fucking all alike. And I thought you were different,” she says, crying.

“Kit, what are you talking about?”

But she’s standing now, buttoning up her jeans. Furious; at me, but mostly at herself. She’s confused, guilty, unsure. Her hands form themselves into fists.

“I’m not going to have sex with you,” she says.

“What?”

She starts marching away from me down the dune.

“I don’t have to have sex with you. I just want to be with you. Come back here, please. Kit, please, we don’t have to do anything. We’ll talk or not talk, anything. Just stay here.”

“Fuck you. And I told you, I already have a boyfriend,” she screams and runs to the rowboat.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going back to Plum Island,” she shouts, launching the boat into the surf.

“Wait a minute,” I yell, struggling to my feet and running after her. She jumps aboard and rows away from the beach. The wind has dropped but it’s raining again.

“Come back. It’s not safe.”

“Fuck you. I can do this in my sleep. Go to hell,” she yells, pulling away from the shore in broad, confident strokes.

I try a different approach.

“But how am I going to get back?”

“Walk back.”

“How?”

“Follow the Merrimack and you’ll eventually come to Newburyport and then…” but I can’t hear her anymore. I wave to her and wait to see if she’ll come back, but she doesn’t and soon she’s way out in the channel, a disappearing speck in the gray waves.

Shit.

I watch until I’m sure she’s safe, and when she lands the boat on the Plum Island shore I pull my hood up and begin the long walk back to town.

Four or five bloody miles by the looks of it.

“Women. Jesus,” I mutter to myself.

No, not women, girls. That was the bloody problem. Stupid teenage, know-nothing wee girl.

Fuming, I walk over the dunes and out of the state park.

Back on Route 1 again. This awful bloody road. This bloody state, these bloody people. Should have asked her about her real ma again; that always sets her off. Give her something to be really pissed about.

’Course it’s raining, too. Typical.

I stick my thumb out but not a single person gives me a lift.

I finally reach the bridge over the Merrimack and trudge across it into Newburyport. When I get into the center of town, I’m still fuming. A bloody cocktease, that girl, she knows what she’s doing. Wee hoor. Beeatch, with a capital B. Have to wonder about anyone with the taste to go out with Jackie in the first place. No sense at all.