23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale(74)

Now she’d found an opening. “What about it, hog? You down with me, you gotta wear my name on you somewhere. How about on your forehead, would you like that? Or the palm of your right hand. You can get a lot of respect for ink on your palm, you know. It’s supposed to be the place it hurts the most.”

Marty glanced up but studiously avoided making eye contact.

“How about on his balls?” Queenie asked, and the women had a good laugh at that. “You know,” Queenie added, “if he can find them again.”

Clara thought she should try to defuse the situation. If Marty reacted, the women would hound him mercilessly—but if he didn’t react at all, they would probably hurt him just to make him react. “That’s real loyalty,” she said, louder than she’d meant to. “Getting Maricón to cover that one up.”

Guilty Jen turned very slowly to look at Clara. Then she got down from the table, moving like a cat, and came over to where Clara sat against one wall. She started to crouch down in front of Clara, then swung around to make clawing motions at Marty while stomping one foot on the floor.

The ex-CO jumped. Not much, but enough to get another laugh.

“My bitches are color-blind,” Guilty Jen told Clara. “That’s the first thing you get rid of when you join my set. It don’t help nobody, hating on people of color. That right, Featherwood?”

“That’s right, Jen,” Featherwood agreed. “You helped me see that.”

“I’m impressed,” Clara said. “I know most gangs in prison gather around racial lines, because—”

“What the boys do in their gangs is bullshit, and it means nothing to us. When you got a dick, you lose the ability to think straight.” Guilty Jen crouched down easily next to Clara. “Sometimes I think you dykes have the right idea. No men around to f*ck things up, no men to play stupid games about who can piss farther or make the smellier fart. Women join gangs for protection, that’s all. They don’t really care, deep down, if your hair is straight or kinky. They know life is more complicated than that. Oh, they can memorize the bullshit lines the men hand them, about racial purity this, and ten thousand years of history that. They can talk it back to you all day. But they join the gangs in the first place because they want somebody to watch their back. So they don’t get stabbed over some drama they didn’t even start.”

“Is that why Queenie joined up with you?” Clara asked. “Or Maricón?”

“No,” Guilty Jen said. “They came to me because they wanted some respect. They wanted to respect themselves. They wanted to share the respect I get. I taught ’em that, that there’s more to life than being safe and protected. Anybody can take a beating if they have to. Maybe they don’t believe it at first, but they learn. Not just anybody can fight back, get revenge. That’s where respect comes from. These girls know I’m tougher than anybody else they’re likely to meet. They know if somebody disses them, somebody puts a hand on their stuff or maybe grabs their ass in the showers, they know I’ll be there to kick that somebody’s teeth out. That’s respect.”

Clara looked at the women of the set. Featherwood’s face was scalded. Queenie’s jaw was puffy and bruised, and when she tried to eat it hurt her too much to chew. Maricón was wearing thick bandages over one eye. “You must have kicked a lot of teeth out for these three.”

“You shoulda seen Carol, she had her leg snapped,” Maricón said. “And Shanice, she’s gonna get plastic surgery on her nose, they said, ’cause they didn’t set it until it was too late. They were both in hospital when this shit came down. Thanks to your girlfriend.”

Clara’s mouth formed an O. “I see,” she said. “It was Caxton who did all this. And yet—the last time I saw her she was just fine.”

Guilty Jen’s face remained calm. Her eyes didn’t widen, her nostrils didn’t flare. But down by her side, she brought the fingernails of one hand together and then flicked them apart violently. This was clearly a sore spot.

“She’ll get what’s coming to her. She’s going to die, there’s no question about that. In fact,” Guilty Jen said, and she started to smile again, “I think we might be able to do a little worse than just kill her, now that we have you. Like maybe, we get her to come in, turn herself in, whatever, for the vampire, and then, just as she’s about to get her blood sucked, I cut your throat while she watches. That would work for me.”