Her eyes peel open slowly until she’s staring back at me, no movement other than that. No smile. No display of undying love. Not even a sense of gratitude for my heroics back there. Not that they were my heroics entirely. I just have money. Money buys anything. Including death.
“Own me?” she questions. “I’ve just gained freedom, Malachi. No one owns me.”
“You’ve gained nothing. You’ve just bartered one devil for another. Don’t ever think I’m any less fearsome than he was.”
She keeps staring, as I sip my drink, attempting to negotiate that thought in her mind. I’m not surprised. All this between us has been on the surface until now, laced with enough intrigue and emotion that I’ve become possessive about her. What it is after that, what becomes of us, will be as much a revelation to me as it will be to her. My thoughts tell me that. They speak of ownership, of adoration, of yearning and need. “But at least this devil loves you, little Alice. Far more useful to your life chances, don’t you think?”
A half smile stretches on her face. “You said you wouldn’t say it often. That’s twice in twenty four hours.”
“If you knew what it means to my perverse thought process, you’d perhaps be less amused with yourself about it. I am still the man who hunted you. Still the man who bleeds you. Still the man who will hurt you. Relentlessly.”
The smile doesn’t shift from her face. In fact, she sighs gently with it, as if giving me permission to be exactly who I'd like to be on any given day of the week. I’m not used to the feeling that provokes inside me. It’s unusual. No one’s ever stopped me being whomever I choose to be in life anyway, but, from this moralistic little tiger, I find the sentiment – the acknowledgement of need perhaps - settling. And that, for me, is enough reason to keep breathing for a while longer yet.
She is.
~
I’m not sure what I’m staring at while I wait for her. This townhouse maybe. The fixtures. The grandiose nature of its entire aura. I spin in the hall, slowly taking in everything I grew up in, remembering all the arguments with my father about respectful behaviour, about protocol and the seemingly privileged position I was being given. These rooms lost their flare the moment my grandfather died. Not only their flare, but their meaning, too. I can still see him now on the last visit here. He stared like I am doing, lost in his age old thoughts perhaps, but no doubt condemning his son’s rigidity in business and life.
The flare, most definitely, missed a generation.
I got rid of that generation, though. I took over. And yet, in my confusion and monotony, I’ve barely defined my own generation. Jones still is as Jones was.
“Ready,” she says, coming out of the lounge.
I look at her, taking in the leather, the bright red lipstick, the hair spiked out a little. A new generation of Alice has arrived now she’s found her freedom. “Do you like this house?”
“What?”
“The house?”
“I guess. Who wouldn’t?”
“Me.”
She looks back to the side table and picks up her helmet. “Sell it then.”
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Jones.”
She smiles and gets in front of me, for some reason pulling my collar hard until she’s up in my face. “You’re not Jones. You’re my Malachi.” Her fingers drop my collar, both sets leading down to my chest. “In here, you’re whoyouwant to be. Listen to that.” A kiss gets left on my lips before she walks out the door to the street. “You can bewhereveryou want to be. Bewhoeveryou want to be. Dowhateveryou want to do. I really think you think too much. Just talk more, Malachi. Do more of what you love doing. You’re only here once.” I follow her out, watching as she tips her head to the early evening sky and lets the rain fall down on her. “If I had all this I doubt I’d think much at all. I’d just be. I’d take every day as it came and try to do some good with it, I guess.”
I catch hold of her waist, dragging her wild little ass back to me. “What good would you do with it?”
“I don’t know. Help the poor, save some kids, give hope to people without any. There are loads of things that need doing while you lot are busy causing damage to the system.”
I laugh and turn her into me, amused with her analogy of me and my kind. “I don’t damage it. I stabilise it.”
She glares. “Stabilise it better than you are doing then. Maybe make yourself smile on occasion because you fixed it rather than broke it. What would I know, though?” She struggles from my grip, pulling the helmet on, lid flipped open. “Where are we going?”
I don’t answer, I get on the motorcycle and wait for her to get on behind me. We’re going somewhere so she understands her worth to me because, as much as I hate to admit it, she no longer needs me. Two days’ worth of being in this house, of fucking and laughing and drinking and not having her under the threat of Greene have made that clear to me.
Despite our bargain, she could slip out into the night, or day, and be gone at her own discretion. I don’t like that thought much, but I don’townher in any way. Never will. We could battle that ground. I could force her. It wouldn’t work. Not well enough for me, anyway. For once in my life, taking something I want is not enough. I need the agreement spoken out loud, brought forth from her heart so I know it’s real.
The journey isn’t long, nor is it particularly pleasant other than the feel of her around me. It’s filled with the drudgery of poor people and their lives on streets I shouldn’t be near. I am near them, though. As long as she’s around me, I am as much a part of this as I am of my own world. There will be no taming my Alice. There will only be her freedom to exist however she chooses. Because what comes with that is all I need from her. She will lead me down these avenues, perhaps promoting their assets, and define a new breed of me.
