The Girls I've Been(4)
“Where do you want him?”
“Over there.” The man gestures with the gun toward the little lobby area, where the kid’s still hiding under the table.
My stomach drops, because Wes hesitates. That gun in Gray Cap’s hand snaps back to him so fast, Iris sucks in a soft breath next to me.
“Was I not clear?” Gray Cap asks, and there it is. The anger in his voice. I’ve been waiting for it. Poised on a knife’s edge until I heard it.
There’s nothing like an angry man with a gun. I learned that early.
“Sorry, man, this is gonna hurt.” Wes shifts the guard up, his face twisting as the man lets out a punch of a sound, all pain and fear. Wes handles him as gently as he can—I can see how careful he’s being; Wes is always careful—but more blood spills down the man’s arm as Wes places him down in the lobby area, away from the glass doors.
Gray Cap grabs one of the heavy posts that holds a sign advertising mortgage loans, tears the sign part off, and threads the metal pole through the handles of the bank’s door, making it hard to flee and harder to breach.
This is getting worse by the minute. We don’t have police in Clear Creek; we’re too small and rural. We just have the sheriff and his six-deputy team, two of whom are part-time, and the closest SWAT team is . . . God, I don’t even know. Sacramento, maybe? Hundreds of miles away through the mountains.
“All of you, get over there in the waiting area.” Gray Cap gestures to where the guard and the kid are. We obey, and the teller joins us, her face still wet with tears as she stares down at the guard. Iris whips off her cardigan and presses it against the guard’s shoulder, and then the teller seems to snap out of it, taking over for her with a shaky nod.
“It’s gonna be okay, Hank,” she tells the guard. His mouth twists in pain as she tries to stop the blood.
“Are you okay?” I ask the kid. Her eyes are wide and glassy. She jerks her head quickly.
“It’s going to be fine,” Wes tells her.
“Quiet, all of you. I want your phones, purses, keys, and wallets, everything in a pile, right there.” Gray Cap points with the gun to the lobby table.
I place my phone and wallet on the table, Wes following my lead.
Iris sets her wicker-basket purse carefully next to our stuff, the red Bakelite cherries attached to the handle shaking at the movement. She glances at me as she sits back down, a gleam in her eye, and my stomach jolts as I realize what’s missing on the table: She still has her silver lighter. I saw her pocket it in the parking lot. And it’s still there, tucked in the folds of her vintage dress. The skirt is full, falling over Iris’s second-poofiest crinoline, and the dress is tailored so well that the pocket’s hidden in the sharp folds of cotton.
They don’t make clothes like this anymore, Nora. She’d said that the first time we met, when she was spinning in that red skirt of hers with the gold swirls. It had flared out around her like magic, like she was the flick of flame before an inferno, and I hadn’t been able to breathe around how much I wanted her to be something in my future.
Just like right now. She’s my present and my future, with our only weapon tucked into deceptive layers of cotton and tulle. She’s already thinking this through to freedom, and it’s the spark of hope I need.
I nod the slightest bit to let her know I get it. One edge of her mouth quirks up so her dimple flashes, just for a second.
Asset #1: Lighter
— 5 —
The Iris of It All
When I met her, I didn’t fall for Iris Moulton like a ton of bricks.
No, I actually tripped over her, like she was a ton of bricks.
One weekend last year, I’d been running some files downtown for Lee, and I wasn’t looking where I was going. Next thing I know, I’m falling ass over ankles, the papers are everywhere, and this girl, this freckled brunette who looks like she’s cosplaying a Hitchcock movie, is tangled up with me.
It was the perfect meet-cute, except when you’re a girl who likes other girls, there’s this little additional dance, because what if she doesn’t? So you’re not looking for red flags like a girl does with a guy—you’re looking for rainbow ones.
I thought we were going to be friends. And we were, at first. But I told myself that’s all we could be. After everything with Wes . . . I told myself I couldn’t. Not until I figured out how to explain everything in a way that didn’t ruin everything. And I was pretty sure that was impossible, so basically, I was looking at a life of celibacy and misery and hiding.
Then there was Iris, with her poofy fifties sundresses and her wicker purse shaped like a frog and that fixation on fire that would be creepy if you didn’t know she wanted to be an arson investigator.
It took months. She slow-rolled a kind of subtle romantic warfare I didn’t even see coming, and then one day, I was on a date with her before I even realized what was happening. It was a whole Mr. Darcy/Elizabeth Bennet I was in the middle before I knew I’d begun sort of thing, where I was Darcy and she was Elizabeth, and I do not have the gravitas or snobbery to pull a Darcy, let me tell you. But apparently, I had the Darcy cluelessness, because we were halfway through dinner before I realized it was maybe a date. Partly because I kept telling myself it couldn’t be a date.