James Baldwin - Stained Glass

“Me?” Talya squeaked.

“What? It’s a safehouse. It’s a house that’s safe. I’ll send a couple guys with you to watch the place while you soften this guy up.”

“I have work tomorrow!”

Jenner sighed and rolled her eyes. “Come on, kid. You chose to sign on to the Tigers. This your job now, until we approve your petition.”

Talya stiffened in her seat. “Petition?”

“Yeah. You think you can just stroll into the club because you’re John’s Kid Wonder? You’re a petitioner right now. I ain’t even taught you how to ride a bike yet.”

“I grew up in the country. I know how to ride a motorcycle,” Talya replied, huffing her cheeks.

Jenner laughed, but compared to her usual shameless, raucous laugh, it was muted and stiff. “I mean a real bike, not one of those shitty little Russian putt-putts. We’ll build you a chopper that’s better than any vibrator you’ll ever own. It’ll hum so hard it’ll send you straight to Heaven.”

“Oh my god, Jenner.” Talya’s accent finally bled through to her otherwise-perfect English. “Shut up.”

“What? You haven’t ever gone and polished the pearl in public?”

“Polish the- No! Jenner, no!”

It bought a chuckling wheeze out of Duke, folded up beside her, and even a rueful smile from Zane.

We dropped Jenner off at Strange Kitty, got our things, and headed east and north. The safehouse was a tattoo parlor close to Strange Kitty, a small store on an unquiet street in Williamsburg. ‘Hand of Glory’ was written in looping font on the glass. The place was a bit nicer than the Bronx, in that most of the buildings hadn’t been set on fire at some point in the previous decade, but every window had bars and every storefront here had roller shutters with large, effective padlocks.

We pulled up at the curb: us in the big powder-blue Buick, Zane in another, darker blue car, and two other Tigers on their bikes, neither of whom wore the Big Cat Crew patch that identified the shapeshifters of the gang. With more room in the back, we’d brought my surgery kit with us. Talya carried it one-handed, the shotgun clutched in the other. She opened the path ahead for us all, as Duke took Angkor, I took myself and my cat, and the other three Tigers quickly and discreetly dragged Vanya – gagged and bound – from the trunk and inside the parlor.

“He goes downstairs, we go upstairs,” Zane said. “Go treat Rex and Angkor. We’ll take this guy down and chain him up.”

Vanya mumbled something dark and unintelligible, struggling as he was hauled off towards the back of the parlor and out of sight. Talya let us into a stairwell leading up to the next floor, a door that had once been green, but that was now a leprous mix of flaking colors and exposed wood. We entered a narrow L-shaped hall that smelled like old cigarettes and unwashed laundry. All of the rooms were to the left of the entry: a tiny open den with a kitchen connected by an arched doorway, two dingy bedrooms with fold-out beds, and an equally close and sweaty bathroom. That was where I directed Talya to place my tools.

“Home sweet home,” She trilled. She set the surgery kit down with a thump. “Do you need anything?”

“Maybe,” I replied. “But I can’t undress while you’re here. Send Duke to check in a couple minutes. If I’m dead, you know I cut something important.”

Her lips pursed for a moment, before she silently ‘Oh’d and then turned and left without another word.

Once the door was closed, I limped to the sink and fumbled for the tap, trying to push through the brainfog. When I looked at myself in the mirror on the back of the door, I saw why it was so difficult. All up, I was stuck with probably two feet of broken glass, plus or minus the smaller shards that bristled from my arms, chest and face like porcupine quills. My clothing was ripped to hell. The white shirt I’d worn under the jacket was now variegated pink and red: red where I was bleeding, pink where my sweat had tracked blood through the weave.

Gingerly, I began to take off what clothing I could, hanging the ruined jacket and torn shirt, cutting around the slacks and freeing them from around the punctures. When I was done, I grasped the piece of glass in my hand and pulled it free with a low, breathless snarl. The pain peaked, and then ebbed as blood pulsed sluggishly from the wound. I tugged the damp glove off to find my hand crusted dried blood that was liquefying as the new stuff flowed across my palm and ran down to patter on the floor. I wouldn’t be fighting anything for some time, not with this hand. I gingerly flexed my stiff fingers, and got a small spasm of motion from them. The nerve wasn’t severed, at least.

There was a knock on the door, and it opened to reveal Zane’s burly tattooed arm as he held the Wardbreaker out to me, grip-first, and waved it back and forth. “Hey, man. You forgot this.”

“Come in.” I was picking glass out of my face, dropping the pieces of it into the sink. They were stained, dirty-looking things, and not just because of the blood. The glass itself was grimy, with little particles of matter trapped inside. “How is Duke?”

“Fine. He’s a Weeder. They heal fast.”

“They?” The question was an absent one, thought out loud as I opened the kit and got the materials I needed to patch up my hand. Painkillers, first of all, and anti-inflammatories. Saline, antibiotics, dressings.

Zane sighed, a testy little sound. “We, whatever. How long do you think you’ll be?”

I glanced at him, and then returned to working on my palm. “Until I’m done.”

He looked like he was about to snap at me as he fought for his next words, but was apparently struck mute as he watched me pick a four-inch piece of glass out of my arm with forceps.

“Jenner’s called a meeting,” he said, thickly. “She’s mad, Alexi. Really mad. I think she’s going to do something stupid.”

“Gang politics.” What more was there to be said? It was the same in every gang, clique, mob and company. “Those with power always want more.”

Zane frowned, and looked down. “I know. Jenner’s good people, Alexi, but this has wrecked her. Seeing Mason like that… She blames Michael and John for all of this.”

“John’s dead,” I said. “I’m not certain why she blames him when he was murdered and her partner is still alive, however demented he may be.”

“Yeah. Zane watched me in the mirror while I dabbed styptic on the wounds in my face. It stung terribly, but the powder stopped the bleeding.

I supposed this was as good a time as any to bring up the fight. “So I needed to ask you som—”

He awkwardly and accidentally spoke at the same time as I did. “I’m sorry to hear about your friend.”

My hand froze, poised to dab the stinging powder onto the oozing cut just below my cheekbone.

“I uh… I lost people, too. I mean, have lost them.” Zane shuffled uncomfortably, massaging the flesh between thumb and index finger with the other hand. “Maybe not in the same way. But no one can talk about their deaths, you know, and no one ever does. Not without being fuckheads about it.”

I resumed my delicate work, eye ticcing as the styptic set the nerves in my face alight. “People here love to call for war, but they ignore the soldiers who die unless it’s politically useful.”

“Not Vets,” he said. “Gay men.”

I froze again, this time in confusion.

“You just struck a chord in me back there, I guess,” Zane shrugged, nervous and jerky. It was odd to see a man of his size in that kind of posture of defense. “You said you were angry that people were lying to you all the time. I… lied over breakfast that one time, after getting off the phone with Caleb.”