Page 40 of Lady Sings the Blues

12.

Beau

“Did you see her?” I bellow, stumbling out of the bathroom, still cupping my balls and barely able to stand straight. Jesus my woman packs a bigger fucking punch than I gave her credit for. I didn’t even have time to do my pants up.

“She get away again, Bossman?” Bloodhound can hardly contain his laughter as he sits at the bar with his sister, who’d incidentally, known Elise all this time, and I never knew. Bad fucking luck there. She’s sexy as hell but doesn’t even come close to my woman.

“I don’t see anything fuckin’ funny about this.”

“She ain’t the only snapper in the sea,” Rick, the bartender, calls out to me.

“Yeah well—she is for me. Which way she go?”

“Elise didn’t come out this way,” Livvy, Blood’s sister tells me.

Shit.

“Let’s ride, baby girl,” Blood says to his sister pulling her by the hand, and we file outside moving toward our bikes. At least we know she’s not with the Horde. It’s not much to console my burning nuts, but it’s something. Damn that woman can be stubborn when she wants to be. Won’t hear me out. I’ve got a side, and I’d like to share it if she ever gives me the chance.

I mount my ride and just scream into the air. “Uggghhhh!” Then crank the engine to life and rollout. The four of us, Bloodhound, Carver, Chaos and myself, along with Liv of course, who’s straddling her brother’s bike, head back to Blood’s sister’s apartment. She says we can stay as long as we need to.

We rumble up Lake Shore Blvd. to a high rise condo. Nice digs. Phone sex must pay well. Well enough to get her two parking spaces. Nobody gets two parking spaces on Lake Shore unless you’re shellin’ out big time. So we roll into the attached parking garage. Livvy don’t even own a car. She says she can get everywhere she needs to go by bus, L train, or taxi. We’re able to fit our four bikes in her spots no problem.

We’re imposing as we stand filling the elevator. Men and women in business suits or clubware wave us away as the door slides open for them at each stop. We hear a lot of, “I’ll catch the next one.”

Apparently they ain’t used to our kind on this side of the city. Becoming more and more impatient at just about everything. “Jesus,” I complain. “How far up do you live?”

“Fifteenth floor,” she says casually, completely ignoring the fact I’m being a whiney bitch right now. It’s gonna take fuckin’ forever with all the chumps ringing for an elevator, so I hold down the door close button, allowing us to bypass all remaining floors.

The whole time I feel Blood’s sister study me.

“What?” I lash out.

“So you’re Beau?” I don’t say anything, and she continues. “As in, ‘cuzBeauhad todie?” She sings the lyrics Elise had changed. Even I have to admit that was pretty clever, if not that funny.

I nod. “But you call me Boss or Bossman. Elise is the only one calls me Beau.”

She bites down on her bottom lip.

I watch, and I see Chaos watching for an entirely different reason. So I gesture for her to spit it out, whatever she has to say to me to get her to quit with the lip biting, because I figure Blood won’t be too happy with him if he reads what I’m reading.

“It’s just,” she continues, “She was so angry—what’d you do?”

“Liv.” Blood steps in, admonishing his sister. “You of all people know how this works. Not our business. Not our place to judge.”

They’d grown up in this life, their pops a lifer in the Illinois chapter, ‘til he was gunned down in a bar fight. Blood took his revenge but had to leave town to keep the blowback from his retaliation from hitting his sister. Found out all this when he prospected with us, came in about six months after me. The same time as Chaos.

“You listen Raif, I’m not in that life anymore. And anyway, I wasn’t judging. She’s my friend, or she was until your bunch showed up tonight ruining the fun. I’m so glad to see you, I’ve missed you. But the honest truth is I’m a phone sex girl who grew up in biker culture. I don’t have many friends, and if you’ve just lost me one, I’d like to know why.”

“You stay out of it,” Blood says. “Boss has it handled.”

“So then why areyouhere, again? Simply to pay your little sis a social visit after being gone for almost five years?”

“He’s my brother,” is all he says for explanation.

“And this is why…” she whispers, shaking her head in disappointment at not just him, but all of us.

When the bell chimes the fifteenth floor, I let up from the door close button, and they slide open.

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