Cameron Haley - Skeleton Crew

“Why not? You just have to keep love alive, keep the home fires burning, all that shit.”

Honey laughed and shook her head. “Men are better in the wild, Domino. You can tame them if you work at it hard enough, but it takes away everything that made them interesting in the first place. Then you’re stuck with a best friend and roommate who won’t clean house and hates to go shopping. What’s the point?”

“He could help you raise your child.”

“What the hell does a man know about raising a child? And why would a mother want to let him try? My family will help me raise the baby, Domino. If it’s a boy, Jack will return for him when he’s old enough. The boy will go a-wandering with his father and learn to become a man. If the child is a girl, Jack will visit and spoil her with gifts and affection, but he won’t stay long enough to do any permanent damage. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

“So you only get one night with your husband, and then he leaves.”

Honey smiled a wicked smile. “Yeah, for now, but Jack and I both know what the morrow brings. And oh, gods, Domino, what a night it will be! It’ll be enough to keep my home fires burning until the next time Jack comes home.”

Adan rode back to the city with me after the wedding festivities wound down. I drove straight to my condo and parked the Lincoln. He followed me up without asking why I wasn’t taking him home. When we got inside the house, I threw my jacket on the couch, grabbed his hand and pulled him into my bedroom.

“Mrs. Dawson is in there,” he said.

“She can watch or she can leave.”

“But Domino, tomorrow…”

“Shut up, Adan,” I said. “I don’t care about tomorrow.” I turned him around, pushed him down on the bed and pounced before his protests could escalate. Maybe it was a week of fighting zombies and demons, or maybe it was the fairy wedding. Maybe I’d been working up to it for a while. Whatever it was, I didn’t care. I wanted it. I needed it. Sometimes it really is as simple as that.

L.A. had survived the zombie apocalypse, but Adan and I made love like it was the end of the world.

Later that night, I awoke to find my bed empty. I got dressed and drove out to Venice Beach, and I found Anton on the boardwalk. He sat on the grass under a palm tree, wearing sunglasses with a cap pulled down low on his face.

He leaned against the tree and stared across the sand at the moonlit surf rolling in. I sat down beside him and we watched the sea for a while.

“When I came to this country, this was first place for me,” he said finally. His voice was so dry and harsh it was hard to understand the words. “I got the taxi at LAX and I told him to bring me here. He dropped me off and I paid him and then I stood in this spot with my suitcase and looked at ocean. It was old, pink suitcase from Soviet times. Babushka gave it to me when I left. I could afford to buy the new one, but I took it so I would remember her. I bet I looked funny standing here with pink suitcase.”

“There are stranger sights in Venice than a Russian gangster with a pink suitcase.”

Anton tried to laugh and it sounded like a smoker’s hacking cough. “I remember I’m thinking, this is the place where any man can be a chief. Any man can be a boss.”

“I’m sorry, Anton. I guess it never worked out that way.”

He looked at me and smiled, the leathery lips stretching away from yellow teeth. “You make joke with me, Domino,” he said. “It was everything I dream about that day. I had good life here. Babushka would be proud of me.”

“I’m sure she is,” I said, my throat tightening on the words. “Maybe it’s time to go see her, now.”

“Da,” he said, nodding. “Now it is time.” He struggled to his feet and turned to face me. He took off the sunglasses and dropped them in the grass, and he looked at me with those dead, gray eyes. “Will it hurt, Domino?”

“No, Anton,” I said, and my voice broke. “It won’t hurt at all.”

Noe stepped up beside me and sniffed at the leg of Anton’s track suit. The dog turned its head up to look at me, and whined.

“Goodbye, my friend,” I said, and I nodded to the Xolo. Then I turned and walked away. I’d have some guys claim his body from the morgue. I owed Anton a nice funeral, with pretty flowers and a good coffin with small pillows inside.

The next morning, I awoke to a deep rumble from the street that rattled the windows. I went to the French doors and drew the sheer curtains aside. Adan was parking a canary yellow Harley-Davidson Panhead at the curb on the other side of the street. The saddlebags bulged and there was a large pack tethered behind the seat. Jack stood on the oversize chrome headlight casing looking up in my direction. His eyes found mine and he touched his hand to his heart. I flipped him off and dropped the curtain over the window. I went back and sat down on the sofa and waited.

Adan buzzed from the front door of the building and I ignored it. A few minutes later, he rang my doorbell, and then knocked a few times when I ignored that, too. He killed my wards, juiced the lock and came in. He was wearing a scuffed, black leather jacket with a lot of zippers and buckles, faded jeans and black engineer boots. He took off his aviators and stood in the hallway, watching me.

“You’re leaving,” I said, “with Jack.”

“I tried to tell you last night, but you didn’t let me. I wanted to explain.”

I shrugged. “What’s to explain? You’re running away.”

He came in and sat down in the armchair across from me. “I’m running from all this,” he said, gesturing around the room with his sunglasses. I knew he didn’t mean the room. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and stared at me. “I’m not running from you.”

“I’m here, aren’t I? I’m part of all this. So you’re running from me.”

“Come with me, Domino,” he said, and I heard the earnestness in his voice. “We’ll hit the road, sleeping in motels and taking our juice where we can. We can be like Bonnie and Clyde.”

“And Jack,” I said. “Bonnie and Clyde and Jack.”

Adan smiled. “Yeah, and Jack. At least for a while.”

“Well, fuck you, Adan. There’s a war here. You know I can’t leave.”

“Why not, Domino? L.A.’s getting the front edge of the storm, but it’ll be everywhere before long. And there aren’t any sorcerers out there to protect people. No outfits. What happens when demons start showing up in Podunk, Iowa? What happens to those people?”

“They’re not my problem.”

“We can make them our problem,” Adan said. “Just as easily as my father made Los Angeles our problem. It’s our choice. No one owns us. We choose our responsibilities, Domino. I know you think you’re the only one who can run this thing, but the outfits will get along without you. My father is back. He can make Terrence captain. The city will survive. Out there, they’ve got nothing. No one.”

“So that’s your plan? You’re going to walk the earth? Do you see yourself more as Kane or Jules?”

Adan looked at me with that infuriating blank expression on his face.

“Kung Fu? Pulp Fiction?” He didn’t know much about pop culture if he didn’t know Kane or Jules.

He shook his head. “I don’t have to walk, Domino. I’ve got my bike.”

I clenched my jaw and bit down on the anger rising into my face. “Why, Adan? Why can’t you stay? What’s so fucking bad about what we’ve got here?”

He shook his head. “It’s not bad,” he said. “It’s just not mine. I don’t belong here, Domino. Maybe it would have been different if I’d grown up here. I don’t know. But I didn’t. Oberon took me and it turns out he can’t just give me back. I don’t know if I can explain this. I don’t fit, Domino, or the world doesn’t fit me. It’s like walking around with my shoes on the wrong foot. And I have to fix it, I have to find my place in this world, or it’s going to drive me mad.” He stopped and shook his head. “Please, try to understand.”