Jessie Ch. 02

"Bullshit."

"Not all of them, not most of them, not even some of them. Just enough. Especially in college towns. And he doesn't even need to own them, they just need to be...friendly?"

"You're paranoid."

"I need to be. He told me he loved me and then...he..." she sighed and clenched her fists to her face for a long time. "I've SEEN things. Jane can't be near that man. Ever again. I won't fucking allow it."

I set the food on the floor by her feet. "I'll be in the kitchen, but I'll check in on you every little bit, ok?"

"Yeah. And Gary?"

"See?"

"Thank you."

#####

I did body-weight exercises in the kitchen, played with my phone, snuck down to the kitchen for food. Jessie and McKenna and Jane were gone for a good part of the day, and by the time they got back, I was going a bit stir crazy. Sienna wasn't much of a conversationalist, trying to sleep in between bouts of vomiting, and seeing her so vulnerable was uncomfortable. I wasn't her lover anymore. I wasn't even her friend.

By the time they relieved my shift, I was happy to go out and mow the lawn, and I followed that up with a run and about three hours of sleep. Helluva way to spend a beautiful weekend. I made mac and cheese for dinner, Jane racing between the kitchen and the gigantic dollhouse in the living room that the girls had purchased for her, and I listened to Lays Of Ancient Rome on my phone as I cooked and watched the sun go down.

Jessie came down from the bedroom and ate, and we sat outside with Jane, watching her run across the darkening yard, shushing her away from the pool, and finally hooking her arms around Jessie's neck in a piggyback ride so we could all climb up into the nose of Jessie's rocket. I'd bought the playground equipment from the city about two years ago when they'd decided to demolish it. Jessie had an attachment to it from her time living alone in Milwaukee, and after her ectopic miscarriage, I'd had it installed to cheer her up. Sitting at the top was comforting to her.

Unlike most kids climbing forty feet into the air, Jane wasn't bothered at all by the heights. She looked out through the bars at the dusk-lit neighborhood, pointing and babbling to herself. Jessie and I sat against the central pillar, her back to my front. "She's irritating as shit," Jessie said, looking up at me with a rueful grin.

"Yeah, that's why you bought her four hundred dollars in toys this afternoon."

"It's the constant noise. Doesn't she ever stop?"

"You don't mind, I know you."

She sighed. "I really don't." There was a pause. "Do you ever wonder what life would be like if we..." Her voice trailed off.

I kissed her hair. "Occasionally."

"Do you ever want one or two?"

"Nope. I love our life just the way it is. I'm a selfish asshole like that."

My chest vibrated with Jessie's silent chuckle. "Me too."

I hugged her tight. "I love you."

#####

Jane loved the sensation of flying down the rocket's slide, shrieking with delight as we zipped towards the ground. She demanded that we go, again and again, climbing up through the structure hanging on my back, then sitting in Jessie's laptop to slide down. We did that over and over and over again until the backyard darkened and the Wisconsin mosquitos made the night unbearable.

Jessie took Jane up to say good night to Sienna and to get her ready for bed, and then took the first shift of the night, McKenna coming down to tuck the little girl into bed on the couch before joining me at the dining room table. She shut the doors between it and the living room, then paced the kitchen looking for food.

"Looking for something?"

"Some kind of alcohol besides that gasoline you guys drink."

"Liquor cabinet in here."

She dug around in the wide wooden bar for ages while I admired her bent-over butt, finally selected a bottle of the cheap Wild Turkey Jessie used for mixing, dumped it over a pile of ice cream in a giant mug, and added a can of Coke and a long squeeze of chocolate over the top.

"How do you stay so small?" I asked wonderingly as she sat down across from me.

"Squats and lunges. And a treadmill. Good genes help too, all the fat I eat goes right to my titties." She bobbled the titties in question at me through her t-shirt and dug into her sundae.

I watched the tired little programmer dig into the calorie bomb. "How you doing?"

"Bored. There's only so much coding I can do, only so much porn I can watch before it all gets old.

A little pissed at your friend, I don't really want to spend a week doing this. But I will, for you and Jessie."

Thank you."

She kept eating and I kept watching.

"What about that other thing?"

She looked up guiltily. "The...uh...shooting somebody thing."

"That thing, yeah."

"Really not digging all the time to think I have up there. Every time I hear sirens - and Gary, this neighborhood has a lot of sirens - I think they're coming for me."

The Brotherhood of the Red Flag had staged a terrorist attack in Denver the last day we were there. Car bombs and a riot. I'd nearly been kicked to death. McKenna - who had given me grief about carrying a gun for as long as I'd known her - had stolen Jessie's revolver out of our hotel safe on the first day of the conference and had been carrying it unbeknownst to anyone. She fired a shot that convinced the guys kicking me to death to stop. Hit one of them in the leg even though she'd been aiming center mass.

She was... Conflicted.

"They're not, you know that, right?"

"Intellectually, yeah."

"Ok."

"And what feels even worse is... Like... I care about the minute chance of getting arrested way more than I care about the guy I shot. His life is changed totally. I really fucking hurt him... And I don't give a shit."

"He was a bad guy. He was kicking me to death with his buddies. I would've killed him if I could've, and I wouldn't have given him any more thought than ordering a pizza."

She gave me a sad, rueful smile. "I know that, intellectually. But I'm not like you, Gary. This is my first rodeo. I feel bad that I... That I don't feel bad. I feel like I should feel worse. And I'm already terrified and messed up. I mean...I tried to kill somebody."

"Yeah. And that was a good thing. Thank you."

"I keep trying to tell myself that." McKenna had finished her sundae, and now she slurped down the liquid at the bottom, weak whiskey and melted ice cream and cola. "But every time I close my eyes... I'm right back there. Even if I'm awake. Twice yesterday I was coding and I heard car bombs go off, and fighting, like we were back on Sixteenth. At night all I'm seeing in my dreams is the glowing green dots on top of Jessie's gun, and they're on his chest, and my hand is shaking and I know if I don't pull that trigger you're gonna die and Jessie and I are gonna get raped and beat to death."

The words tumbled out in a rush as she stared into the messy bottom of her ice cream dish.

"Are you ok, Mickey?" I asked, and for once she didn't give me the finger at the use of her hated nickname.

She sucked in a shuddering breath. "I'm glad I did it, I'm glad I didn't get caught. I just wish I didn't have to, that I wasn't there. And now I'm spending eight hours a day watching over a woman who actually IS the victim of violence and I just feel stupid and vulnerable and I..."

I got up and walked over, pulled her to her feet and wrapped her in my arms. She sagged into me, and I picked her up easily, sat down on her chair with her seated side-saddle across my legs, and held her close. Eventually, she looked up at me, a small smile crossing that round, youthful face. "Two things?"

"What's up?"

"One, can you take me shooting this week? Teach me? Like, I feel like if I know more, I won't feel so scared all the time. I know I already asked, but, could you do that for me soon?"

"Sure."

"And also...I know you won't call me Mike because of your friend, and my name doesn't exactly flow out of a mouth... Can you call me Kenna instead of Mickey? I hate being called that."

"Kenna. Kenna. I'll try."

"Thank you." She put her head back against my chest. "I needed this."

#####

And it wasn't the only time that night that I'd need to comfort an emotionally distraught woman.

I took the next watch on the third floor, relieving a tired Jessie to go get some sleep. Sienna had practically moved into the bathroom, and every time we checked on her she was either sitting on the floor wrapped in a blanket trying to read, or sprawled on the floor trying to sleep or trying to escape the wild fluctuations of body temperature by pressing against cold tile.

Jessie smiled when I wrapped my arms around her from behind as she watched a movie on her tablet at the kitchen table. "How's our guest?"

"Last I checked, snoring on the floor."

"Good. How's my girl?"

She snuggled back into me, turned her head and gave me an adoring look from the corner of her eye. "Tired. I'm gonna go down to our room and sleep if that's ok with you."

"Yeah, why wouldn't it be?"

"Just checking. Thought maybe you'd want me to stay here with you."

I shook my head. "Nah. You go to sleep. Though I've got to warm you, I think McKenna might be in that bed already."

"Did you two...?"

"Nah. It was just more comfortable than whatever she was gonna set up on the first floor. She took your trick with the laptop and wrote something to make her phone ding if it picks up movement from Jane, so yall should be good."

"Ok. You have a good night. Call if you need anything."

"I will."

Jessie kissed me, stifled a yawn, and headed downstairs. And I settled in for the night. Watched TV. Read. Knocked on the bathroom door and asked if See was alright. At some point, I made a can of soup for myself, and after hearing the shower start decided against making one for Sienna right away. I waited until I hadn't heard the shower for a while and heated up some chicken noodle, knocked on the door. "See, you decent?"

Silence.

I waited a moment, the hot bowl stinging my fingers. "I'm gonna come in."

I opened the door and set the soup on the counter. No Sienna. The curtain was drawn around the tub, and I looked for her shadow against it.

"Sienna?"

"I'm here," she croaked.

Fuck it, I'd seen her naked before. That was a mellow way of putting it. I pulled the shower curtain aside. "You ok?"

She was naked and curled up in a ball with just her head above the surface, the tub almost overflowing. Red marks from fingernails covered her arms."I can't get warm."

I poured a glass of water and pulled two acetaminophens from my pocket. "When was the last time you took anything?"

She cocked her head, thinking. "Fuck if I know."

I knelt by the tub and she stuck out her tongue for the pills, and then I held the glass for her to drink from. She was shivering, despite the heat I could feel radiating off the tub. "I brought you soup."

"Great. Something I can actually puke up instead of just dry heaving."

"See..."

"Thank you." She rolled her head to look at me, and I was once more struck by how different she looked. Yeah, the red hair was a change, so were the tattoos, but the lack of...vitality...in her face...The wired awake, red, hollow eyes, the raw lips, the look of utter desolation on her face. I couldn't see my former student in this shell of a human. All I could see was pain.

And damage.

I gritted my teeth and vowed to kill Morgan Skolnich if I ever met him.

"I should've listened to you," Sienna whispered hoarsely. "I should've...obeyed."

"It's ok. This isn't your fault. Hell, you're probably one of the very few people going through withdrawal that can say that."

"It is my fault. If I hadn't been so pissed at you for not... For not being in love with me... If I had just stayed in a hotel for a couple of days and then come back, I...I wouldn't be HERE."

"You wouldn't have a daughter either."

"Yeah, no shit," she said bitterly.

"If you want to assign blame, it's my fault. I led you on. I let you in a lot closer than I should have. I encouraged you. I gave you hope that there was an...an us...outside of...sex." I wanted to make her feel better, wanted to lift this weight from her shoulders.

"You can take that back one step further, I shouldn't have kept trying to get into bed with you. If I don't keep telling you I want you, if I don't take your class..." her shoulders climbed in a miserable shrug.

"Well fuck, See, if I hadn't become a teacher this wouldn't have happened either, IF you want to go back that far."

She smiled at me, a sad, sad twist of the lips. "I just should've been a better...a better sub for you. I wasn't what you needed, and I just kept...conning...You to get what I wanted. I'm sorry, Gary. I -"

She'd been getting more and more agitated and now she burst into tears, leaning forward to put her head in her hands, shivering as she sobbed. I put a hand on her slippery shoulder. "Sienna, look at me."

Knees pulled up and arms around them, she pressed her face forward, making herself as small a ball as possible while she sobbed uncontrollably. All I could do was leave my hand on her shuddering shoulder, try and give comfort through touch as the emotion wracked her.

Dammit.

I took her head in my hands, gently turned her face so I could look into those wet, reddened eyes. She hiccuped and wiped her nose.

"Sienna Schneider, look at me."

"Don't - don't call me that. I don't have a family anymore. They don't want me." A small moan escaped her, and she fought against the shuddering in her muscles, half sob, half shiver.

"Look. At. Me." I'd used the same commanding time with her in the past, though usually, it was an order to undress or open her legs or stop squirming on my lap. She recognized the iron in my voice and jerked her eyes my way, gritting her teeth.

"You are stronger than this. I know it. You've got like two more days where this is gonna suck, and then you're gonna start feeling better. Five days, a week, and you should be feeling back to kinda normal. You need to hang on and stop blaming yourself. This isn't your fault, it isn't mine, the guy who's fault it is isn't in the room. You're safe here, Jane is safe, it's gonna be ok."

Tears leaked out from squeezed shut eyes, and she coughed, hung her head. "No, it's not. What about after? After all this? I can't go back to school, even if I could pay for it, I have a fucking kid. I can't get a job, my family's gone. All I had was Morgan and he...he...he burned me. Did this to me. Fuck I'm cold..."

Sienna lurched and gagged and slimy mucus leaked out of her open mouth into the tub. "C'mon, let's get you out."

I showered her down with the sprayer as she stood, and I wrapped her in about twenty towels before I drained and wiped down the tub. "How about moving around some? You've been laying or sitting for like two days, you should probably walk a little bit."

Draped and wrapped in terrycloth, she leaned on me as I walked slowly around the bedroom and kitchen. "Take a seat, I'll get your soup."

I got the bowl from the bathroom and set it in front of her at the kitchen table. She took small sips from the trembling spoon, gracefully accepting scatter of Pepto tabs I dropped into her hand. I made myself a bowl as well, mostly for something to do, to have something to look at besides her.

"How's my girl?" she asked finally.

I pulled up the app on my phone, showed her. She held the phone gingerly, a small smile crossing her face as she watched her daughter sleep. "We've been trying to keep her occupied, distracted, trying to keep her from looking too hard for you. McKenna really likes her I think, and she really likes McKenna. They've been hanging out a lot. I'm..." I swallowed hard, didn't want to say this. "I'm guessing you haven't spent a LOT of time with her."

Sienna closed her eyes, sighed. One more thing that caused her pain. "I haven't been the best mom."

I could imagine. "Tell me about Morgan."

"Gary, I..."

I knew she didn't want to discuss her violent babydaddy with her former...lover? Dom? Whatever the fuck I had been, I'd done a shitty job of it. But this guy was one of the most elite soldiers on the planet, and I had a dozen of his stolen rifles sitting in my basement, his drug-addicted girlfriend in my kitchen, and his daughter sleeping in my living room - I had to at least start planning for the possibility that this very literal revolutionary might show up soon. "See, you brought this to my doorstep. I need to know about this guy."

She swallowed a spoonful of soup, hard. "What do you want to know?"

"Everything."

Silence. A long silence. "He was nice, at the beginning. He was a customer at the store where I worked. He bought a black hoodie..." Her voice trailed off and she stared into the chunks of beef and vegetable floating in the bowl before her. "I told him where I waitressed, and he came in a couple of times, sat in my section. Bought me dinner after a shift once. He'd bring me lunch at the shop if he wasn't working. He had a lot of the same attributes you do - strong, commanding, he expected to be heard and obeyed. He kissed me in the Housewares section, by mixers. The next day we had sex in the alley behind the restaurant while I was on my break. It felt so fucking good to be with someone strong and who WANTED me."

There was no way for me to respond to that. I hadn't wanted her like she needed. I'd been trying to replace someone and just going through the motions.

"We moved in together pretty quick, and it was everything I wanted. We just weren't...careful...or maybe he wanted to trap me with a baby so I couldn't leave. He introduced me to drugs like right away. Sex on ecstasy is... Then oxy. And then I was doing whatever I could to please him. I...I was pregnant, I made hardly any money, I was lonely, and this guy had the drugs that made me feel... Good. Warm. Loved. And he made me feel that way too. I think I told you, he's charismatic. Magnetic. He can flip this switch and go from the kindest man you've ever known, friendly, handsome as a model, to...bad... Just like that. It's quick and its, it's total. It's like he's a robot pretending to be human."

"You ever see him get violent? With anyone but you?"

"Yeah. At a couple of, uh, rallies. He has this big knife that he really likes. Brown and black."

"Kabar. A Marine's best friend."

"Yeah. I can't count the number of times I disinfected that thing, washed blood out of his clothes. He likes a very specific pistol too. He made a point of telling me it wasn't issued to him in the Corps, he picked it out himself."

"What is it?"

She shrugged. "Dunno. Does it matter?"

"Not really."

"He likes bombs too. Says they're his favorite thing in the world. He learned how to make them in the military, and now he's setting them in cars and teaching other people how to make them."

I shuddered. Just what the world needed, a psychopathic bomb maker thinking he was starting a revolution.

Not.

"That's fucking awesome to hear."

Sienna gave me a sad smirk, scratched her arm through the pile of towels and blankets. "He meets with people, powerful people, who tell him where they want the bombs to go off, and then... Then they do. The Brotherhood... He stole it from somebody else. Took control, started making cells, feeder groups he called them. People who were interested, sympathetic, willing to join, willing to fight... He has this whole hierarchy and training program and command structure and it's probably based on his days in the Marines. Like, if you're willing to make phone calls, you get a job, of you're willing to hit a guy with a pipe for crossing the street, you'll work somewhere else. And he taught them how to blow stuff up, so now each one of his cells functions just like him, but without him there. He can be off getting orders and hanging out with the elites, relay back down what he wants to explode."