Jack O'Connell - The Resurrectionist

“You’ve seen the Clinic,” Nadia said, “then you’ve seen the city. A bunch of comatose patients lying in an ugly warehouse.”

He flinched and she noticed and said, “I’m sorry. I forgot. It’s just a big, grimy mill town. You’re not missing anything.”

“You wanted,” he said, “to talk to me about Danny.”

She nodded.

“I’d rather wait, you know, till we’re at the place. Till we can relax a little.”

He started to reply and she said, “Shit. I forgot my cigarettes.” She looked over at him and said, “You don’t smoke, do you? You look like a health nut.”

This he took as a compliment.

“I ate a dozen peanut butter crackers for dinner last night,” he said.

Nadia turned her head toward him, pushed out her big lips, then said, “Well, keep it up, it’s working.”

She watched him flush and fed the Honda some gas.

He said, “I was a pothead in college. But I never smoked cigarettes.”

“You were not,” she said.

“I swear to God. I was stoned day and night for years.”

“You don’t look the type,” she said.

An ad came on the radio and Sweeney turned it off and said, “Things have changed.”

She took another turn. He realized that though he’d been watching the landscape roll by — warehouses and foundries and obsolete chemical plants — he hadn’t been paying much attention to the route and he probably couldn’t find his way back to the Clinic.

“I thought this place was close by,” he said.

“You’ve got someplace else to be?” Nadia asked and he was a little surprised and put off by the way it came out. Nothing soft about it. No smile in its wake.

“I just don’t like to be too far from Danny,” he said.

“Danny’ll be fine,” she said. “You’re the one I’m worried about.”

Now they were driving past tenements, crumbling brownstones and row houses, heading toward a downtown section full of neon and traffic.

“Worried about?” he repeated.

She sighed and reached to the dash and turned the radio back on. The Moments were singing “Love on a Two-Way Street.” She looked at him for so long that he got nervous and said, “Drive the car.”

“I really didn’t want to do this,” she said, “until we had a couple of drinks in front of us.”

“Do what?”

“I’ve worked at the Peck for a year, okay?” she said. “And before that I worked at Rasicott Memorial in Cincinnati. And before that at the Ford-Masterson in Phoenix. All right? I’ve seen a lot of people like you, Sweeney.”

“How like me?”

“Like they’re so angry and so guilty and so sick with grief that they’re staying alive just to punish themselves.”

He kept silent for a long minute and then, unexpectedly, Nadia took a left down a wide, dark avenue and came to a stop in front of a gravel lot full of motorcycles.

She sat staring at him, waiting for the response. He reached over and killed the engine and said, “You don’t know me at all.”

They both took it as a threat. She let it hang there for a while, then said, “Why don’t we argue about it over an eye-opener?”

Nadia got out of the car, slammed the door and started walking toward a red brick ark next to the lot. Sweeney let himself watch her ass. Even in the heels, she finessed the gravel. She moved as if she knew he was watching. He pulled the keys from the ignition and followed her. The air was cooler than he’d expected and a little wet. It felt good on his face and he didn’t want to go inside a stuffy bar. But she’d already entered the building through a pair of towering steel doors. So he jogged up the front walk to join her.

Carved into the granite arch above the entrance, in huge block letters, were the words

HARMONY PROSTHETICS.

The doors below featured two heavy brass bars that required pushing down for entry. Sweeney leaned on one bar, then the other, but both refused to budge. He blew out some air and looked back at his car. Then he put the keys in his pocket and pounded on the doors with his fist.

There was no answer. He moved around the side of the building and came to the gravel lot full of bikes. They were all Harleys, parked as if on display in a showroom, perfectly aligned, the forks angled just so. But they were all a mess, mud-spattered and grease-caked.

He walked down the line, inspecting them, came to the last bike and put his hand, lightly, on the throttle.

And he heard, “Don’t you fucking touch it.”

It wasn’t yelled. The words came out slow and even. He turned around and saw the speaker, skinny and bearded, all denim and leather, ass perched on an iron rail that fenced a concrete loading apron, which hung off the back of the factory and wrapped around the side. The biker had his torso angled to see Sweeney and he clutched a chicken leg in one fist.

Sweeney took his hand off the throttle.

“I was just admiring the bike,” he said. “That’s all.”

The guy on the loading dock brought the drumstick to his mouth, tore off some meat, and began to chew. Before he was finished he said, “How ’bout I admire your faggot ass?”

Then there were three more of them glaring from the dock and Sweeney bolted for his Honda. But the bikers vaulted the rail and were on top of him before he cleared the line of Harleys. The fat one threw a body check and Sweeney went down to the gravel, protected his head but felt his palms shred. They pulled him up into a crouch and the skinny one, still holding his chicken bone, planted a knee in Sweeney’s groin. He collapsed and lost his air but they didn’t let him hit the ground. He closed his eyes and waited for the next blow, but found himself, instead, being hauled across the lot, half carried, half dragged, up a few stairs, across the dock, and inside the mill.

They deposited him in a chair. It took a few minutes for his eyes to adjust to the dimness. Music was playing, some old Santo and Johnny, but it got shut off as soon as he recognized the tune.

There was a small platoon of them, fanned out in a semicircle, most of the arms folded over the chests and everything bulging. The place smelled like Colonel Sanders and skunk beer and wet towels. Sweeney put his hands over his balls.

“You think you can fuck with other people’s property?”

He focused in on the voice and saw Buzz Cote, the guy from the lunch counter at the Mart.

Sweeney stayed silent and Buzz stepped out from the semicircle, put a boot on the lip of Sweeney’s chair and tipped him back until his head met the wall. He stayed that way, on the edge of falling. Buzz leaned over his own leg, brought a hand down to his boot, and then there was a Buck knife out in the air and Sweeney pulled in a breath and said, “Please don’t do this.”

Buzz said, “I asked you a question, shithead,” and Sweeney answered, “Please, I’ve got a kid.”

From someplace deep in the room, Nadia Rey yelled, “C’mon, boys, play nice.”

Behind Buzz, one of the bikers let a laugh fly. And then everything was happening quickly. The knife was back in the boot and the chair was upright and Buzz was pulling Sweeney to standing and bear-hugging him like a lost brother and clapping his back hard enough to clear his lungs. And then the circle was disbanding with war whoops and whistles and cans of beer were being tossed hand to hand and popped open. The music started up again and the room seemed to brighten and Buzz had turned and pulled Sweeney to his side, arm wrapped around Sweeney’s shoulder, and was walking him through a maze of bodies and around an engine that was leaking onto a floral bedsheet spread out in the middle of the floor.

Nadia was seated at a long metal table at the far end of what appeared to be an antique cafeteria. The room was lit by dozens of votive candles melting over every gritty surface. Buzz eased Sweeney down next to Nadia on an aluminum bench. Sweeney stared at the woman but couldn’t say anything. Buzz sat next to Sweeney, sandwiching him in.