Bad to the Bones(42)

“I’m sorry, Bodhi. It’s not going to happen. I have a new path now.”

“Yeah!” agreed Speed. “She can make her own f*cking omelets now!”

A shadow crossed over Bodhi’s face as he grabbed his Predator helmet and shook it so the dreadlocks swayed. “You’ll regret this, Asanga. I know the situation with your sister. I know it was Shakti who put her in that situation. Without you there to protect her, you know right where she’s going. The bath house. The clean room. Yup. That’s what she has in store for her if you’re not by her side!”

What that, Bodhi saddled up and roared out of the hangar. Before the tailpipes even halfway vanished down the runway, Speed had turned to me quizzically.

“What the f*ck, Bellamy? What was that last part all about? What’s so bad about a bath house? And what’s Virginia’s situation?”

“It’s all right,” I lied. “Knoxie’s on top of it. He’s got it handled.”

“Well,” said Speed. “I hope I never have to witness another scene like that. Because I’ll bury that motherf*cker in a hot second. You know that, don’t you?”

I nodded sullenly. “I know.”

“What the f*ck is up with that bike? I haven’t ridden a bike like that since I was sixteen. Does he think he’s going to pop wheelies?” Speed looked distantly out the hangar doors. “He’s just a disrespectful jerk. He’s got to know. If you give respect, you get respect. If you act like an *, you’ll be treated like an *.”

“I don’t think he knows that.”

I was safe for the moment. I had no idea what Knoxie was enduring on my behalf.





CHAPTER TWELVE




KNOXIE


“That’s got to be some monumental blowjob.”

“Well, she promised she’d take her time. Maybe she’s using an anal vibe on him too.”

“She’d better have new batteries in it,” said Ziggy, “because the second that Sporty comes around that corner, I’m out of here.”

Knoxie checked the clock on his cell phone for the zillionth time. Five-oh-five. Rafael and Virginia were five minutes late. Whichever kook Rafael had convinced to give the daimyo at this gate the ride of his life, well, she must have been doing a good job. No one had been there when they’d approached this little-used gate of Merry-go-round Canyon. If busted? they had agreed to tell the cultists that Knoxie had taken Rafael’s safe deposit box key the other day when he’d jacked the truck, and now was giving it back in trade for the bike.

Knoxie took one last drag of his cigarette and dropped it to the gravel. “If this shed’s a-rockin’, don’t come a-knockin.’”

Ziggy laughed in astonishment. “What the f*ck? That’s hilarious.”

“You’ve never heard that before?” Knoxie felt old. He tried another one out on Ziggy. “I smoke weed, I snap bras.”

“Get out. You just made that up.”

Knoxie had nothing better to do, watching the guard’s shed from a safe distance of forty yards. Luckily this part of the road was a decline, and Knoxie had coasted down the last rise after cutting the engine. Inside the shed, Rafael’s whore had cranked up the space music that seemed to be accepted out here, too. Martian landing sounds overlaid soothing waves at sonic levels. “Ass, gas, or grass. Nobody rides for free.”

Sputtering, Ziggy nearly doubled over in half. Ziggy must’ve been ten years younger than Knoxie, but his insulated life growing up in the “poverty with a view” of Flagstaff’s Sunnyside meant he wasn’t too cultured or experienced. Ziggy hadn’t traveled or read widely like Knoxie had, but above all, he was younger.

Knoxie had been feeling ancient lately. It had all come crashing down around him when he’d turned forty and realized he was a divorced broke ink slinger paying child support for kids he rarely saw. Finding Bellamy on that mesa was the beginning of literally a whole new life, only…

He had told Bellamy he would think about her proposal for the zipless f*ck. In reality, it was a no-brainer. He wanted to bury himself deep in that tight snatch of hers. Bellamy Jager was fresh, new, a breath of springtime air. Her naivety turned him on. Her waifish fragility pumped up his superiority, his confidence, his machismo. Simply put, she brought out the best in him, made him feel alive again. After being beaten down to the bone by his nasty divorce—and the revelations that people like Kneecap had been burying their wick in Nicole—he was ready for something fresh.

Her offer to have an emotion-free sexual fling sounded at first like the usual arrangement with a sweetbutt. But there was something funny about it, hearing it from Bellamy. She was just continuing the same warped, dysfunctional way of approaching life she had learned from the ashramites, wasn’t she? A no strings attached fling was just shallow, trivial. It just discouraged everyone from looking deeply at themselves, at figuring out what went wrong.

On the other f*cking hand, it was probably all Bellamy was capable of right now, having just been so trashed by that Kool-Aid vendor. Her ego was in the dumpster, and would be for a while to come, until she built herself back again from all the spare parts. Like Knoxie needed to do.

So why the f*ck not? Why the f*ck not accept her comfort, and give her aid in the only way allowed to them? Knoxie had rarely seen anything bad come from a superficial sweetbutt affair, unless “anything bad” was in the form of a supremely pissed-off old lady, which he didn’t have at the moment. He just had to make sure he publicly claimed her as his own so no one else tried to dip their stinger in her honey. He could ink her with something obvious. Yeah, like PROPERTY OF KNOXIE.